"We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish"
About this Quote
Progress, Hayek suggests, begins with a bruise to the ego. “We shall not grow wiser” is less a pep talk than a warning: intelligence and expertise don’t automatically cash out as wisdom, especially in public life. The hinge of the line is “before.” Wisdom isn’t something you add on top of your record; it’s something that forces you to re-audit it. The price of admission is retrospective embarrassment.
Hayek’s intent is aimed squarely at the modern temptation to treat society like a machine with a dashboard. Coming out of the 20th century’s grand experiments in economic management, he’s arguing that the confidence to redesign complex systems often outpaces our ability to understand them. The subtext isn’t merely “mistakes happen.” It’s that large, well-meaning projects - especially those executed with centralized certainty - generate mistakes at scale, and then protect themselves with narratives that make those mistakes hard to admit. “Much that we have done” is pointedly collective: the “we” is governments, planners, institutions, even a public that rewards tidy solutions.
The line works because it weaponizes understatement. “Very foolish” is blunt, almost colloquial, which makes the indictment sharper than a technical critique. It’s also a quiet attack on moral vanity: if you can’t name your own foolishness, you’ll keep mistaking power for knowledge. In Hayek’s world, humility isn’t etiquette; it’s an epistemic necessity.
Hayek’s intent is aimed squarely at the modern temptation to treat society like a machine with a dashboard. Coming out of the 20th century’s grand experiments in economic management, he’s arguing that the confidence to redesign complex systems often outpaces our ability to understand them. The subtext isn’t merely “mistakes happen.” It’s that large, well-meaning projects - especially those executed with centralized certainty - generate mistakes at scale, and then protect themselves with narratives that make those mistakes hard to admit. “Much that we have done” is pointedly collective: the “we” is governments, planners, institutions, even a public that rewards tidy solutions.
The line works because it weaponizes understatement. “Very foolish” is blunt, almost colloquial, which makes the indictment sharper than a technical critique. It’s also a quiet attack on moral vanity: if you can’t name your own foolishness, you’ll keep mistaking power for knowledge. In Hayek’s world, humility isn’t etiquette; it’s an epistemic necessity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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