“If old truths are to retain their hold on men's minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations.”

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“What at one time are most effective expressions gradually become so worn with use that they cease to carry a definite meaning. The underlying ideas may be as valid as ever, but the words, even when they refer to problems that are still with us, no longer convey the same conviction.”

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“What struck me most was a radical passion for truthfulness in everything... One had to 'live' truth and not tolerate any pretense in oneself or others... Wittgenstein merely carried this further in applying it to himself.”

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“Adam Smith was the first to perceive that we have stumbled upon methods of ordering human economic cooperation that exceed the limits of our knowledge and perception... We are led—for example by the pricing system in market exchange—to do things by circumstances of which we are largely unaware and which produce results that we do not intend.”

from The Fatal Conceit (1988)

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“Smith's work marks the breakthrough of an evolutionary approach which has progressively displaced the stationary Aristotelian view. The nineteenth-century enthusiast who claimed that the Wealth of Nations was in importance second only to the Bible has often been ridiculed; but he may not have exaggerated so much.”

from The Fatal Conceit (1988)

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