Quotes from The Fatal Conceit

By F.A. Hayek (1988)

• I doubt whether there exists a single great work of literature which we would not possess had the author been unable to obtain an exclusive copyright for it; it seems to me that the case for copyright must rest almost entirely on the circumstance that such exceedingly useful works as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, textbooks and other works of reference could not be produced if, once they existed, they could freely be reproduced.#
  Intellectual Property
• These rules, precisely by limiting the range of means that each individual may use for his purposes, greatly extend the range of ends each can successfully pursue.#
  Law
• Priding itself on having built its world as if it had designed it, and blaming itself for not having designed it better, humankind is now to set out to do just that.#
  EconomicsCulture
• While it is true that traditional morals, etc., are not rationally justifiable, this is also true of any possible moral code.#
  EpistemologyEthics
• These rules ‘are not derived from any utility or advantage which either the particular person or the public may reap from his enjoyment of any particular good‘. Men did not foresee the benefits of rules before adopting them, though some people gradually have become aware of what they owe to the whole system.#
  EthicsLaw
• This delusion [that macroeconomics is useful] is encouraged by its extensive use of mathematics, which must always impress politicians lacking any mathematical education, and which is really the nearest thing to the practice of magic that occurs among professional economists.#
  Economics
• The disdained middleman, striving for gain, made possible the modern extended order, modern technology, and the magnitude of our current population. The ability, no less than the freedom, to be guided by one’s own knowledge and decisions, rather than being carried away by the spirit of the group, are developments of the intellect which our emotions have followed only imperfectly.#
  EconomicsCultureLaw
• Relations between individuals can exist only as products of their wills, but the mere wish of a claimant can hardly create a duty for others. Only expectations produced by long practice can create duties for the members of the community in which they prevail, which is one reason why prudence must be exercised in the creation of expectations, lest one incur a duty that one cannot fulfill. #
  CultureLawExpectations
• Recognizing that rules generally tend to be selected, via competition, on the basis of their human survival-value certainly does not protect those rules from critical scrutiny.#

Wilfred Trotter, “”

• Nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man distinguished in one or even more departments of science, is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else.#
  Science