… is from page 188 of Deirdre McCloskey’s and Alberto Mingardi’s excellent 2020 book, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State (footnotes deleted):
Laissez faire was wise in another way, embodying the idea of a Hippocratic oath for social scientists and officials: First, do no harm. Yet, unlike the Hippocratic oath, it went out of fashion.
DBx: Indeed. And the absence of this prudential principle was especially regrettable over these past 12 months.