QOTD, 06/09/2009

"It is (...) hard to believe that anyone informed about the market can honestly condemn the search for profit. The disdain of profit is due to ignorance, and to an attitude that we may if we wish admire in the ascetic who has chosen to be content with a small share of the riches of this world, but which, when actualized in the form of restrictions on profits of others, is selfish to the extent that it imposes asceticism, and indeed deprivations of all sorts, on others."
FA Hayek, The Fatal Conceit
University of Chicago Press, 1988
Chapter Six: The Mysterious World of Trade and Money (page 105)

(Finished the book this evening, I have a few more passages to share over the next couple of days before it goes back to the library...)