The only thing better than "hands-on" experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.
Thomas SowellThe fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool.
Thomas SowellThe fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.
Thomas SowellMuch of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.
Thomas SowellIt is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.
Thomas SowellThe kinds of people we need in government are precisely the kinds of people who are most reluctant to go into government -- people who understand the inherent dangers of power and feel a distaste for using it, but who may do so for a few years as a civic duty. The worst kind of people to have in government are those who see it as a golden opportunity to impose their own superior wisdom and virtue on others.
Thomas Sowell