Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.
Interpretation
True freedom is not contingent upon expected outcomes; it should be granted unconditionally.
Friedrich August Von Hayek's quote emphasizes that genuine freedom cannot be predicated on the assurance of positive results. If freedom is given only with the condition that it will produce favorable consequences, it ceases to be genuine freedom and instead becomes a form of control or manipulation. The essence of true freedom lies in the ability to make choices without restrictions, irrespective of the anticipated outcomes.
In practice
During a debate on civil liberties, one might quote Hayek to argue for unconditional freedom.
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.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
When we are thirsty, we drink the white waters of the pool, the sweetness of our mournful childhood.
None are sent empty away from Christ but those who come to him full of themselves.
Before I die many will die with me and they'll deserve it. See you in Hell.
Since that deluge of newspaper articles I have been so flooded with questions, invitations, suggestions, that I keep dreaming I am roasting in Hell, and the mailman is the devil eternally yelling at me, showering me with more bundles of letters at my head because I have not answered the old ones.
Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.
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