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Without a theory the facts are silent.

Friedrich August von Hayek

…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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Achievement Ignorance Liberty
The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Important Libertarian Liberty
Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Historical Liberty War
The freedom that will be used by only one man in a million may be more important to society and more beneficial to the majority than any freedom that we all use.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Important Majority Men
[T]hose who are willing to surrender their freedom for security have always demanded that if they give up their full freedom it should also be taken from those not prepared to do so.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Giving Surrender Taken Up
[The] impersonal process of the market … can be neither just nor unjust, because the results are not intended or foreseen.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Justice Process Unjust
The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Evil Government Unlimited
It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Essence Law People
It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Differences Moral Today
Without a theory the facts are silent.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Facts Silent Theory
Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Inseparable Liberty Responsibility
Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Ends Individual Mean
Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Advantage Freedom Principles
It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Ideas Judging Philosophy
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Assumptions Beliefs Facts Moral
If I am not mistaken, psychology, psychiatry and some branches of sociology, not to speak about the so-called philosophy of history, are even more affected by what I have called the scientistic prejudice, and by specious claims of what science can achieve.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Philosophy Prejudice Psychology

Without a theory the facts are silent.

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Without a theory the facts are silent.

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