All political theories assume, of course, 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. Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that both the wise and the ignorant lack comprehensive knowledge, emphasizing the inherent limitations in human understanding.
Friedrich August Von Hayek's quote reflects on the nature of knowledge within society, asserting that political theories often overlook the common ignorance of individuals, irrespective of their perceived intelligence. He argues that those advocating for liberty recognize that true wisdom lies in acknowledging the limits of one's own understanding, highlighting that even the most knowledgeable individuals can only grasp a tiny fraction of the vast sea of knowledge that contributes to societal development. This perspective promotes humility and the need for broader dialogue across varying levels of knowledge.
In practice
In a speech about the value of open-mindedness in political discussion.
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.
Accordingly, France Had Voltaire, and his school of negative thinkers, and England (or rather Scotland) had the profoundest negative thinker on record, David Hume: a man, the peculiarities of whose mind qualified him to detect failure of proof, and want of logical consistency, at a depth which French skeptics, with their comparatively feeble powers of analysis and abstractions stop far short of, and which German subtlety alone could thoroughly appreciate, or hope to rival.
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it, and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned perhaps into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just boring hinterland. It was a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away. I'm looking for the truth." And so it goes away. Puzzling.
God's plan is not to abandon this world, the world which he said was "very good." Rather, he intends to remake it. And when he does he will raise all his people to new bodily life to live in it. That is the promise of the Christian gospel.
All beings are by nature are Buddhas, as ice by nature is water. Apart from water there is no ice; apart from beings, no Buddhas.
Doomed Lord's Passing. For the mind of man alone is free to explore the lofty vastness of the cosmic infinite, to transcend ordinary consciousness, to roam the secret corridors of the brain where past and future melt into one...And universe and individual are linked, the one mirrored in the other, and each contains the other.
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