No human mind can comprehend all the knowledge which guides the actions of society.

Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one.

Freedom can be preserved only if it is treated as a supreme principle which must not be sacrificed for particular advantages.

The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.

Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.

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.

Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship.