To rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assumption that they do not differ from other men is implicitly to admit that factual inequality would justify unequal treatment, and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming. 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.
Interpretation
Equality should be based on the principle of treating everyone the same, regardless of differences.
Friedrich August Von Hayek emphasizes that true equality before the law requires treating individuals alike, despite their differences. He argues that if equality is based solely on the assumption that everyone is the same, it opens the door to justifying unequal treatment when differences are found. The core of his message is that the demand for equality must be grounded in a principle that transcends individual characteristics and acknowledges the need for consistent treatment under the law.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about civil rights movements to emphasize the importance of treating all individuals equally under the law.
What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress... it is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.
Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.
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.
The importance of our being free to do a particular thing has nothing to do with the question of whether we or the majority are ever likely to make use of that particular possibility. To grant no more freedom than all can exercise would be to misconceive its function completely. 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.
It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return.
There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.
I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.
Time is our element, not a mistaken invader.
I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I'll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there'd be no night!
Death undoes us less, sometimes, than the hope that it will never come.
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