As a result of the efforts of Hayek .. and the many others who share his general outlook, the idea of a centrally planned and centrally administered economy, so popular in the 1930s and early 1940s, has been discredited.

After all, if you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you also have to believe that no one was ever improved by a book (or a play or a movie). You have to believe, in other words, that all art is morally trivial and that, consequently, all education is morally irrelevant. No one, not even a university professor, really believes that.

The trouble with traditional American conservatism is that it lacks a naturally cheerful, optimistic disposition. Not only does it lack one, it regards signs of one as evidence of unsoundness, irresponsibility.

I regard myself to have been a young Trostkyite and I have not a single bitter memory.

A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.

Even if we can't be happy, we must always be cheerful.

.. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.