'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
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.
The mind cannot foresee its own advance.
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.
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.
We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.
To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
Intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding.
Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.
He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.
Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?
We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.
It can hardly be denied that such a demand quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.
Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.
The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences.
We know: of course, with regard to the market and similar social structures, a great many facts which we cannot measure and on which indeed we have only some very imprecise and general information.
