"If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible."
"Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order."
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers."
"I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal."
"It is bad policy to regulate everything... where things may better regulate themselves and can be better promoted by private exertions; but it is no less bad policy to let those things alone which can only be promoted by interfering social power."
"Industry entirely left to itself, would soon fall to ruin, and a nation letting everything alone would commit suicide."
"But the general welfare must restrict and regulate the exertions of the individuals, as the individuals must derive a supply of their strength from social power."
"An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members."
"Laissez Faire, laissez passer. Let it be, let it pass. The phrase is not readily translatable. It was widely used by the Physiocrats in urging freedom from government interference and was adopted by Adam Smith."
"Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it."