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Hayek Quotes (fwd)
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>From [email protected] Mon Dec 29 22:37:18 1997
From: Jim Choate <[email protected]>
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Subject: Hayek Quotes
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> X-within-URL: http://www.freedomsnest.com/cgi-bin/qa.cgi?ref=hayfa
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>
> [IMAGE]
>
> Quotes from F.A. Hayek
>
> [IMAGE]
>
> 1. Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual
> assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to
> defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts.
>
>
>
> 2. Ever since the beginning of modern science, the best minds have
> recognized that "the range of acknowledged ignorance will grow
> with the advance of science." Unfortunately, the popular effect of
> this scientific advance has been a belief, seemingly shared by
> many scientists, that the range of our ignorance is steadily
> diminishing and that we can therefore aim at more comprehensive
> and deliberate control of all human activities. It is for this
> reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often
> become the enemies of freedom.
>
>
>
> 3. Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that
> the advance and even the preservation of civilization are
> dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen.
> [The Constitution of Liberty, ch. 2.4
>
>
>
> 4. All political theories assume, of course, that most individuals
> are very ignorant. Those who plead for liberty differ from the
> rest in that they include among the ignorant themselves as well as
> the wisest.
>
>
>
> 5. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually
> utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the
> difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which
> the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is
> comparatively insignificant.
>
>
>
> 6. Equality of the general rules of law and conduct, however, is the
> only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality
> which we can secure without destroying liberty. Not only has
> liberty nothing to do with any other sort of equality, but it is
> even bound to produce inequality in many respects. This is the
> necessary result and part of the justification of individual
> liberty: if the result of individual liberty did not demonstrate
> that some manners of living are more successful than others, much
> of the case for it would vanish.
>
>
>
> 7. From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if
> we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their
> actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal
> position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the
> law and material equality are therefore not only different but are
> in conflict which each other; and we can achieve either one or the
> other, but not both at the same time.
>
>
>
> 8. However human, envy is certainly not one of the sources of
> discontent that a free society can eliminate. It is probably one
> of the essential conditions for the preservation of such a society
> that we do not countenance envy, not sanction its demands by
> camouflaging it as social justice, but treat it, in the words of
> John Stuart Mill, as "the most anti-social and evil of all
> passions.
>
>
>
> 9. Justice, like liberty and coercion, is a concept which, for the
> sake of clarity, ought to be confined to the deliberate treatment
> of men by other men.
>
>
>
> 10. ...whenever it is necessary that one of several conflicting
> opinions should prevail and when one would have to be made to
> prevail by force if need be, it is less wasteful to determine
> which has the stronger support by counting numbers than by
> fighting. Democracy is the only method of peaceful change that man
> has yet been discovered.
>
>
>
> 11. The conception that government should be guided by majority
> opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of
> government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the
> view which will direct government emerges from an independent and
> spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a
> large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions
> of the individuals are formed.
>
>
>
> 12. It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by
> some that our knowledge and understanding progress. In the process
> by which opinion is formed, it is very probable that, by the time
> any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view:
> somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the
> majority have reached. It is because we do not yet which of the
> many competing new opinions will prove itself the best that we
> wait until it has gained sufficient support.
>
>
>
> 13. ...it is always from a minority acting in ways different from what
> the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns
> to do better.
>
>
>
> 14. The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves
> within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks
> conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a
> politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a
> democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest
> number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become
> the majority view in some distant future.
>
>
>
> 15. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than
> what he would be able to do if only he were free.
>
>
>
> 16. Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into
> complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand
> that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure
> freedom.
>
>
>
> 17. Human reason can neither predict nor deliberately shape its own
> future. Its advances consist in finding out where it has been
> wrong.
>
>
>
> 18. A society that does not recognize that each individual has values
> of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for
> the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.
>
>
>
> 19. Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when
> it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.
>
>
>
> 20. ...if we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we
> recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not
> sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
>
>
>
> 21. ...it is largely because civilization enables us constantly to
> profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and
> because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may
> serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that
> men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual
> ends so much more successfully than they could alone.
>
>
>
> 22. The mind cannot foresee its own advance.
>
>
>
> 23. Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the
> use of resources, in the direction and kind of human activities,
> in habits and practices. And each change in the actions of those
> affected in the first instance will require further adjustments
> that will gradually extend through the whole of society. Every
> change thus in a sense creates a "problem" for society, even
> though no single individual perceives it as such; it is gradually
> "solved" by the establishment of a new overall adjustment.
>
>
>
> 24. ...the case for individual freedom rests largely on the
> recognition of the inevitable and universal ignorance of all of us
> concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievements
> of our ends and welfare depend.
>
>
>
> 25. ...the ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong
> will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the
> disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong"
> beliefs.
>
>
>
> 26. ...the argument for liberty is not an argument against
> organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason
> can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged,
> monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent
> others from doing better.
>
>
>
> 27. Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist
> theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that
> society is in some sense more than merely the aggregate of all
> individuals their adherents regularly pass by a sort of
> intellectual somersault to the thesis that in order that the
> coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded it must be
> subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in
> the last resort must be an individual mind. It thus comes about
> that in practice it is regularly the theoretical collectivist who
> extols individual reason and demands that all forces of society be
> made subject to the direction of a single mastermind, while it is
> the individualist who recognizes the limitations of the powers of
> individual reason and consequently advocates freedom as a means
> for the fullest development of the powers of the interindividual
> process.
>
>
>
> 28. It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least
> important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own
> limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as
> individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we
> cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even
> the preservation of civilization depend.
>
>
>
> 29. The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which
> its leading schools of thought differ. But the general
> intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the
> views on which the opposing schools agree. They become the
> unspoken presuppositions of all thought, and common and
> unquestioningly accepted foundations on which all discussion
> proceeds.
>
>
>
> 30. From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is
> often but a step.
>
>
>
>
>
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