Quote of the Day

“The interaction of individuals, possessing different knowledge and different views, is what constitutes the life of thought. The growth of reason is a social process based on the existence of such differences. It is of essence that its results cannot be predicted, that we cannot know which views will assist this growth and which will not—in short, that this growth cannot be governed by any views which we now possess without at the same time limiting it. To “plan” or “organize” the growth of mind, or for that matter, progress in general, is a contradiction in terms … The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends … Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of the social process.”

- F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (University of Chicago Press, 1944), p. 181, cited by Easterly in Chapter 2: Freedom versus Collectivism in Foreign Aid, Economic Freedom of the World: 2006 Annual Report

Related;
Hayek, Picture Book Edition