It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know.
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?
It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.
From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.
Hayek was making us think of the productive process as a process in time, inputs coming before outputs.
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.
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.
No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.
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.
Without a theory the facts are silent.
We did not realise how fragile our civilisation was.
Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.
The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.
If democracy is a means rather than an end, its limits must be determined in the light of the purpose we want it to serve.
The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law.
The history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.
To create conditions in which competition will be as effective as possible, to prevent fraud and deception, to break up monopolies- these tasks provide a wide and unquestioned field for state activity.
Once wide coercive powers are given to governmental agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.
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.
In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved.