Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 221 of the Definitive Edition (Ronald Hamowy, ed., 2011) of F.A. Hayek’s 1960 book, The Constitution of Liberty:

The conception of freedom under the law … rests on the contention that when we obey laws, in the sense of general abstract rules laid down irrespective of their application to us, we are not subject to another man’s will and are therefore free. It is because the lawgiver does not know the particular cases to which his rules will apply, and it is because the judge who applies them has no choice in drawing the conclusions that follow from the existing body of rules and the particular facts of the case, that it can be said that laws and not men rule.

DBx: Hayek was born on this date – May 8th – in 1899. Happy 125th birthday, sir.