A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
Interpretation
True equality in wealth requires an authoritarian government to enforce it.
Friedrich August Von Hayek argues that a demand for equality in material wealth can only be satisfied by a powerful, possibly authoritarian, government. This statement reflects his belief in the dangers of excessive political power and the implications of trying to equalize wealth through coercive means, which can undermine individual freedoms and the natural order of society.
In practice
In a discussion about government policies on wealth distribution, one might reference this quote to argue against extreme measures.
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.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. I'm going to figure out what that is.
Every moment is as real as every other. Every 'now,' when you say, 'This is the real moment,' is as real as every other 'now' - and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too.
Day by day, we are becoming what we shall be eternally. The spirit who convicts us is also the spirit who consoles.
A Christian man is on his guard with respect to those who philosophize according to the elements of this world, not according to God, by Whom the world itself was made; for he is warned by the precept of the apostle and faithfully hears what has been said, 'Beware that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the elements of the world'
What is faith? If you believe something because you have evidence for it, or rational argument, that is not faith. So faith seems to be believing something despite the absence of evidence or rational argument for it.
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