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"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. Compared to the totality
of knowledge which is constantly utilized in the evolution of a dynamic
civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that
which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively
insignificant."
F. A. Hayek
The Constitution of Liberty
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1960
p. 30
"Liberty is a system under which all government action is guided
by principles, but it is an ideal that which will not be preserved unless
it is itself accepted as an overriding principle governing all particular
acts of legislation. Where no such fundamental rule is stubbornly adhered
to as an ultimate ideal about which there must no compromise for the sake
of material advantage - as an ideal which, even though it may have to
be temporarily infringed during a passing emergency, must form the basis
of all permanent arrangements - freedom is almost certain to be destroyed
by piecemeal encroachment. For in each particular instance it will be
possible to promise concrete and tangible advantages as the result of
the curtailment of freedom, while the benefits sacrificed will in their
nature always be unknown and uncertain."
F. A. Hayek
The Constitution of Liberty
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1960
p. 68
"It is sheer illusion to think than when certain needs of the citizen
have become the exclusive concern of a single bureaucratic machine, democratic
control of that machine can effectively guard the liberty of the citizen.
So far as the preservation of personal liberty is concerned, the division
of labor between a legislature which merely says that this or that should
be done and an administrative apparatus which is given exclusive power
to carry out these instructions is the most dangerous arrangement possible.
All experience confirms ... 'that the zeal of the administrative agencies
to see their function out of focus and to assume that the constitutional
limitations and guaranteed individual rights must give way before their
zealous efforts to achieve what they see see paramount purpose of government.'"
-F. A. Hayek
The Constitution of Liberty
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1960
pp. 261 - 262
and quoting Roscoe Pound
the Rise of the Service State and Its Consequences
in The Welfare State and the National Welfare, ed. S. Glueck,
Cambridge, mass, 1952 p. 220
"The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our
ordinary life [where] far from exercising a jealous surveillance over
each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for
doing what he likes."
Pericles general of Athens, 461 to 429 BC,
quoted by Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Crawley trans., ii, 37
Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1960 p. 164
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