The quotation is from "The Constitution of Liberty," by Friedrich A.
Hayek.
"Without mentioning the Jews explicitly he discusses their fate in The
Constitution of Liberty:
There can be little question that, from the point of view of society,
the art of turning one’s capacity to good account, the skill of
discovering the most effective use of one’s gift, is perhaps the most
useful of all; but too much resourcefulness of this kind is not
uncommonly frowned upon, and an advantage gained over those
of equal general capacity by a more successful exploitation of
concrete circumstances is regarded as unfair. In many societies an
‘aristocratic ‘tradition that stems from the conditions of action in
an
organizational hierarchy with assigned tasks and duties, a tradition
that has often been developed by people whose privileges have
freed them from the necessity of giving others what they want,
represent it as nobler to wait until one’s gifts are discovered by
others, while only religious or ethnic minorities in a hard struggle
to rise have deliberately cultivated this kind of resourcefulness
(best described by the German term Findigkeit)— and are generally
disliked for that reason. Yet there can be no doubt that the
discovery of a better use of things or of one’s own capacities is one
of the greatest contributions that an individual can make in our
society to the welfare of his fellows and that it is by providing the
maximum opportunity for this that a free society can become so
much more prosperous than others. The successful use of this
entrepreneurial capacity (and, in discovering the best use of our
abilities, we are all entrepreneurs) is the most highly rewarded
activity in a free society, while whoever leaves to others the task of
finding some useful means of employing his capacities must be
content with a smaller reward."
http://www.sinoliberal.com/hayek/untimely%20liberalism%20of%20hayek.pdf
( NOTE: The file linked above is in .pdf format. You need to have
Adobe Acrobat reader software installed on your computer in order to
view .pdf files. If you do not already have this software, a free
download is available here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html )
My strategy in locating this information consisted of using the
keyphrase "in discovering the best use of our abilities, we are all
entrepreneurs." While I failed to get results from a Google web
search, my second-favorite search engine, AllTheWeb.com, took me to
the document linked above.
http://www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=web&cs=utf-8&q=%22in+discovering+the+best+use+of+our+abilities%2C+we+are+all+entrepreneurs%22&_sb_lang=en
I hope this information is useful. If anything I've said is in need of
explanation, or if the link does not function, please request
clarification before rating my answer; I'll be glad to offer further
assistance.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
