“To what degree does it help us to change our life, or even to sense our existence, to really evaluate “why?” I think those questions cannot be escaped. Sometimes in history it’s more hidden; somewhere these can be very personal and individual questions. But in certain times and certain places, your existence has to be associated with other people’s situations. You have to make a reaction to the living conditions. It’s not avoidable. You cannot just be blind about what is happening there. Such is the case in China.”

—  Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Escape from Propaganda, 2009

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Chinese concept artist 1957

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“I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

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Context: I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions. This is a belief deliberately maintained by the other side because if they admitted that the issue is not a scientific question, they would have to admit that their science is antiquated and that, in academic circles, it occupies the position of astrology and not one that has any justification for serious consideration in scientific discussion. It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.

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