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We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purposes.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Doing Good Liberty Opportunity
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Design Liberty Men
Nobody with open eyes can any longer doubt that the danger to personal freedom comes chiefly from the left.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Danger Doubt Eye
If the human intellect is allowed to impose a preconceived pattern on society, if our powers of reasoning are allowed to lay claim to a monopoly of creative effort… then we must not be surprised if society, as such, ceases to function as a creative force.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Creative Effort Monopoly Patterns
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
As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Altogether Evil May War
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Ignorant Liberty Political Wisdom
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.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Causes Limits Real
It is no accident that on the whole there was more beauty and decency to be found in the life of the small peoples, and that among the large ones there was more happiness and content in proportion as they had avoided the deadly blight of centralization.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Blight Centralization Proportion
…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
It used to be the boast of free men that, so long as they kept within the bounds of the known law, there was no need to ask anybody’s permission or to obey anybody’s orders. It is doubtful whether any of us can make this claim today.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Men Order Responsibility
It would clearly not be an improvement to build all houses exactly alike in order to create a perfect market for houses, and the same is true of most other fields where differences between the individual products prevent competition from ever being perfect.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Differences House Order Perfect
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
There may be few instances in which the superstition that only measurable magnitudes can be important has done positive harm in the economic field: but the present inflation and employment problems are a very serious one.
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Important May Superstition
Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing on a road which has led him to great success
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Continuing Errors Men
We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately “create the future of mankind.” This is the final conclusion of the forty years which I have now devoted to the study of these problems
FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK

Finals Mankind Study Years