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

— Friedrich Hayek

We Shall Not Grow Wiser Before

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

— Friedrich Hayek
humility learning wisdom

About this quote

From The Road to Serfdom (1944), Chapter 15, "The Prospects of International Order." Hayek wrote this as a reflection on the accumulated policy errors — protectionism, monetary manipulation, planning — that he believed had contributed to the economic crises of the interwar period. He was arguing for epistemic humility: the admission that confident interventionist policies had frequently made things worse.

Source

The Road to Serfdom, Chapter 15 (1944)

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