Sowell

Thomas Sowell is retiring. He has one of those direct minds that allow complex problems to be seen simply. I think that is an art. His critics say it is simplistic. Here are some of his quotes:

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today. 

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.   

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. 
 

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long. 

 

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. 

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated. 

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

Perhaps his best:

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

And my personal favorite,

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.