We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.

This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.

We know, in other words, the general conditions in which what we call, somewhat misleadingly, an equilibrium will establish itself: but we never know what the particular prices or wages are which would exist if the market were to bring about such an equilibrium.

'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

The credit which the apparent conformity with recognized scientific standards can gain for seemingly simple but false theories may, as the present instance shows, have grave consequences.

The mind cannot foresee its own advance.

We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.

It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know.

It can hardly be denied that such a demand quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.

Our moral traditions developed concurrently with our reason, not as its product.

Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.

If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.

We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.

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.

I regard it in fact as the great advantage of the mathematical technique that it allows us to describe, by means of algebraic equations, the general character of a pattern even where we are ignorant of the numerical values which will determine its particular manifestation.

It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.

The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion.

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?

We know: of course, with regard to the market and similar social structures, a great many facts which we cannot measure and on which indeed we have only some very imprecise and general information.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.

Intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding.

He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty this is mainly because consciously or unconsciously they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

Washington is a city that coddles up to and worships power.

I've always wanted to get into theatre.

I want to separate from the Palestinians. I want them to have their independent, separate state on a contiguous territory, and I want Israel to exist, of course, as a Jewish state in its own territory, as an independent state in its own territory. The Palestinian state, the Israeli state, separate. This is my dream.

In pregnancy, there are two bodies, one inside the other. Two people live under one skin. When so much of life is dedicated to maintaining our integrity as distinct beings, this bodily tandem is an uncanny fact.

I loved Dad more for treating the biological reality as trivial, irrelevant. He loved me no less than his other three children.

Love is the true means by which the world is enjoyed: our love to others, and others love to us.

I have no doubt that there are great people about though... the thing of it is, nothing to this day moves me like classical music (Debussy, Vaughn Williams).

Art is the aesthetic ordering of experience to express meanings in symbolic terms.

There's almost nothing worse to live with than a struggling artist.

There's no way you can shoot low-budget stuff on lots of locations. It's just a practicality thing because every time you move, it costs time and money.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

We don't see a choice between securing growth and investment and raising human rights issues.

The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a joke - albeit a grim one. Alfred Bernhard Nobel famously invented dynamite and felt sorry about it.

'Britain's Royal Families' became my first published book, in 1989, from The Bodley Head, and the rest of the story is - dare I say it? - history!

Too often, the landlord-tenant relationship is unbalanced with all the power on the side of unscrupulous landlords.

Theology must work itself out in the most practical relationships.

Libraries can take the place of God.

Hollywood has the idea that movies have to be dumb. But especially movies for or about teenagers have to be really dumb!