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… is from page 52 of Frank Knight’s essay “Liberal Ethics,” which is Chapter 4 of the original edition of Frank H. Knight [2]’s and Thornton W. Merriam’s 1945 volume, The Economic Order and Religion [3] (original emphasis):
The great moral tragedy of life is not that people fail to act in accord with their ideals, or with right ideals, but that “love is blind,” that goodness, good intentions and good people so commonly do harm instead of good because of failure to understand social and other conditions and the consequences of actions. In particular, they do not see and face the limitations of life, choose between possible alternatives and find satisfaction in attainable progress at a speed consonant with a reasonable degree of order and security.
DBx: By the way, this year is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Knight’s landmark 1921 study, Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit [4].
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