Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who “speak truth to power” but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.
Thomas Sowell
Economist Thomas Sowell has decided to call it a day as a columnist at age 86. An understandable decision but a regrettable one. In a time when lunacy was often regarded as sound policy, Doctor Sowell has been a voice of consistent reason.
Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media has assembled 14 quotes from Sowell as a bitter sweet tribute to what we have enjoyed and to what we will be missing:
1. “It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
2. “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
3. “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
4. “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”
5. “Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”
6. “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is: he confuses it with feeling.”
7. “Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on ‘income distribution,’ the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”
Go here to read the rest.
The gift of men of great wisdom is that even when they are gone from daily discourse, their words remain with us.
These are gems.
Dr. Sowell is an American treasure. I wish him a long and happy retirement.
He has more than earned it.
He’ll be missed. I do wonder if he’s giving up just topical commentary or if he’ll be taking emeritus status at Hoover as well.
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Most of us are a number of years deceased on the 86th anniversary of our birth, and nearly a quarter century retired. He’s impressive in everything he does.
Saw that headline and for a minute their I feared he was completing the Michael-Fisher-Trilogy.
Although, lately they’ve been dying in pairs.
I think he is an enlightenment man in conflict with the vast Orwellian conspiracy.
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A Dr. Sowell quote seen at “The Daily Gouge” blog: “The real minimum wage is zero.”
#1 is painfully true.
One of the less fun blessings of the internet is figuring out how very many things there are where you don’t even know enough to identify if something is good information, bad information or the only thing correct thing it has is the grammar.
Was assigned as an economics major to read his “Knowledge and Decisions” at the Univ. of Dallas (Irving, TX) in the 1980’s.