A society that does not recognize that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow...cannot really know freedom.
All political theories assume...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.
Ambition, impatience, and hurry are often admirable in individuals; but they are pernicious...[in] those who...assume that in their authority lies superior wisdom and thus the right to impose their beliefs.
For almost a century the basic principles on which this civilization was built have been falling into increasing disregard and oblivion.
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
Freedom thus presupposes that the individual has some assured private sphere, that there is some set of circumstances in his environment with which others cannot interfere.
he scientific methods of the search for knowledge are not capable of satisfying all society's needs for explicit knowledge.
Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen.
If in the first attempt to create a world of free men we have failed, we must try again.
If old truths are to retain their hold on men's minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations.
If we are to succeed in the great struggle of ideas that is under way, we must first of all know what we believe.
If we proceeded on the assumption that only the exercises of freedom that the majority will practice are important, we would be certain to create a stagnant society with all the characteristics of unfreedom.
In a sense it is true...that man has made his civilization.... This does not mean, however, that civilization is the product of human design, or even that man knows what its functioning or continued existence depends upon.
It is because freedom means the renunciation of direct control of individual efforts that a free society can make use of so much more knowledge than the mind of the wisest ruler could comprehend.
It is no argument against individual freedom that it is frequently abused. Freedom necessarily means that many things will be done which we do not like.
Liberty does not mean all good things or the absence of all evils. It is true that to be free may mean freedom to starve, to make costly mistakes, or to run mortal risks.
Liberty is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable; we want it because we have learned to expect from it the opportunity of realizing many of our aims.
Many of the utopian constructions are worthless because they follow the lead of the theorists in assuming that we have perfect knowledge.
Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders.
Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value.
Our faith in freedom does not rest on the foreseeable results in particular circumstances but on the belief that it will, on balance, release more forces for the good than for the bad.
Our freedom is threatened in many fields because of the fact that we are much too ready to leave the decision to the expert or to accept too uncritically his opinion about a problem of which he knows intimately only one little aspect.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
The difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant.
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.
The guiding principle that a policy of freedom for the individual is the only truly progressive policy remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century.
The members of a society who in all respects are made to do the good thing have no title to praise.
The significant point is that the importance of freedom to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the number of people who want to do it: it might almost be in inverse proportion.
The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one.
Those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom.
To prevent people from coercing each other is to coerce them. This means that coercion can only be reduced or made less harmful but not entirely eliminated.
We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice.
We shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in.
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.
What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free.
What is important is not what freedom I personally would like to exercise but what freedom some person may need in order to do things beneficial to society. This freedom we can assure to the unknown person only by giving it to all.