Why should we, however, in economics, have to plead ignorance of the sort of facts on which, in the case of a physical theory, a scientist would certainly be expected to give precise information?
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
The mind cannot foresee its own advance.
I regard it in fact as the great advantage of the mathematical technique that it allows us to describe, by means of algebraic equations, the general character of a pattern even where we are ignorant of the numerical values which will determine its particular manifestation.