From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 12:19:53 +0800
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Subject: Hayek Quotes (fwd)
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>From ravage@ssz.com Mon Dec 29 22:37:18 1997
From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
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Subject: Hayek Quotes
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> X-within-URL: http://www.freedomsnest.com/cgi-bin/qa.cgi?ref=hayfa
> 
> 
>    [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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