I believe that the main lesson which our generation has learnt is that we must find a new limit for the activities of government, a limit which leave… - Friedrich Hayek

Altruism is an instinct we've inherited from the small society where we knew for whom we work, whom we serve. When you pass from this, as I like to call it, 'concrete society', where we are guided by what we see, to the abstract society which far transcends our range of vision, it becomes necessary that we are guided not by the knowledge of the effect of what we do, but by some abstract symbols. Now, the only symbol which tells us where we can make the best contribution is profit. And in fact by pursuing profit, we are as altruistic as we can possibly be, because we extend our concern to people who are beyond our range of personal conception. This is a condition which makes it possible to produce what I call an extended order, an order which is not determined by our aim, by our knowing what are the most urgent needs, but by an impersonal mechanism which by a system of communication puts a label on certain things which is fully impersonal.

My life has been dominated by my differences with John Maynard Keynes. That turns almost wholly on the - I believe, false - conviction that there is a simple relationship between aggregate demand for consumer goods and the volume of employment. Keynes was one of the most intelligent people I knew but he understood very little economics. He must not be blamed for his disciples. He knew the danger of inflation.

There mere idea that the planning authority could ever possess a complete inventory of the amounts and qualities of all the different materials and instruments of production of which the manager of a particular plant will know or be able to find out makes the whole proposal a somewhat comic fiction. Once this is recognised it becomes obvious that what prices ought to be can never be determined without relying on competitive markets.