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.
Interpretation
True freedom encompasses the rights to pursue unique individual choices, regardless of their popularity or common usage.
In this quote, Friedrich August Von Hayek argues that the true value of freedom lies not in its widespread application but in the allowance for individual expression. Even if a particular freedom is only exercised by a rare individual, it can have profound societal benefits, illustrating that the significance of freedom extends beyond mere collective usage and is essential for innovation and progress.
In practice
In a speech about civil liberties, one might say: 'As Friedrich August Von Hayek noted, the importance of freedom is not determined by its use by the majority.'
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 younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable.
Basically we could not have peace, or an atmosphere in which peace could grow, unless we recognized the rights of individual human beings... their importance, their dignity... and agreed that was the basic thing that had to be accepted throughout the world.
Germany lost the Second World War. Fascism won it. Believe me, my friend.
If you have a high evaluation of yourself then your ability to recognize new facts is weakened.
Racism in Brazil is well hidden, subtle, and unspoken, underestimated by the media. It is nevertheless extremely violent.
Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.
But would we know, whether the pretended prophet had really attained a just sentiment of morals? Let us attend to his narration; and we shall soon find, that he bestows praise on such instances of treachery, inhumanity, cruelty, revenge, bigotry, as are utterly incompatible with civilized society. No steady rule of right seems there to be attended to; and every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.