I found this quote of a quote in Art Carden’s essay on mises.org:
In the late 1940s, a group of classical-liberal scholars formed the Mont Pelerin Society with the goal of carrying the liberal tradition through the storm of post–World War II interventionism, and a speech from their first meeting, in which Friedrich Hayek quotes John Maynard Keynes, suggests an answer:
It is more than likely that from their point of view the practical politicians are right and that in the existing state of public opinion nothing else would be practicable. But what to the politicians are fixed limits of practicability imposed by public opinion must not be similar limits to us. Public opinion on these matters is the work of men like ourselves, the economists and political philosophers of the past few generations, who have created the political climate in which the politicians of our time must move. I do not find myself often agreeing with the late Lord Keynes, but he has never said a truer thing than when he wrote, on a subject on which his own experience has singularly qualified him to speak, that
the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good and evil.
Mr. Carden concludes:
“Thus, I follow the advice of others who have come before me and I try not to get too caught up in or depressed by current events. Things are what they are, and there is little if anything I can do to change them over the very short run. My hope is that today’s political disasters will spark a passion for ideas, a passion for truth, and a passion for justice. These are dark times, but the foundation has been laid for a classical-liberal renaissance. Policy after policy threatens us with short-run malaise, but I for one remain hopeful and optimistic.” (Read more from mises.org”>Read more from mises.org)