Friedrich Hayek Quotes

If I limit myself to knowledge that I consider true beyond doubt, I minimize the risk of error but I maximize, at the same time, the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important and most rewarding things in life.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Indeed, the most important product of knowledge is ignorance.

The fact that anytime you think you really know something, you're going to find out you're wrong - that is the rule. The moments where you think you have something figured out, those are the exceptions.

The main battle is to make people realise that doubt is important. Doubt is good. The 'don't know' answer sometimes is the box you should tick, and it's about not being scared about that fact. Even the greatest minds don't know everything.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

I don't know what the future holds. Anything is possible.

While some of us may know than others about certain things, it is the thinnest slice of all that is, or could be known. In that sense, we are all profoundly ignorant.

You're never going to learn everything.

I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things.

Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty.

To allow mystery, which is to say to yourself, 'There could be more...things we don't understand,' is not to damn knowledge....It is to permit yourself an extraordinary, freedom: someone else does not have to be wrong in order that you might be right...This tolerance for mystery invigorates the imagination; and it is the imagination that gives shape to the universe.

All uncertainty is fruitfull ... so long as it is accompanied by the wish to understand

We know lots of things we didn't use to know but we don't know any way to prevent 'em from happening.

To me, the right approach is to say we are profoundly ignorant of these matters. We need to work on them. But to suddenly say the answer is God - it's that that seems to me to close off the discussion.

Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.

Whatever the future holds I'm not really sure.

I'm still working out my opinions - it's always a question mark. I leave loads of space open, and people don't like that.

That knowledge which stops at what it does not know, is the highest knowledge.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

Precise knowledge is the only true knowledge, and he who does not teach exactly, does not teach at all.

The recognition that no knowledge can be complete, no metaphor entire, is itself humanizing. It counteracts fanaticism. It grants even to adversaries the possibility of partial truth, and to oneself the possibility of error.

Grown people know that they do not always know the way of things, and even if they think they know, they do not know where and how they got the proof.

A scientist is never certain. ... We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning.