Happy belated 95th birthday to Thomas Sowell
I missed the occasion, which was yesterday. But I want to wish a belated happy birthday to a formidable and formative thinker on the right, probably the contemporary political writer I most admire. He apparently has hardly lost a step in his extreme old age, which is quite an achievement.
Here are links to the over-100 posts I’ve written that mention Sowell. But for now I’ll just repeat the substance of this one from four years ago:
And yet most people probably have no idea who Sowell is.
Sowell was one of the very first thinkers I encountered during the course of my political change experience, and he was probably the most formative one. When I initially read his work – I think it was the book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy – it was with a happy sigh of recognition and relief as well as admiration. Finally, here was someone who was voicing clear, intelligent, common-sense versions of thoughts, some of which were new to me but some of which I’d already had in extremely inchoate and amorphous form but had never been able to articulate or order. He made perfect sense, and I couldn’t imagine why everyone in the world didn’t agree with him.
Unfortunately, they didn’t.
Notice also that subtitle – of a book first published in 1996 – Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. That’s an excellent example of Sowell’s ability to distill – into a short phrase, sentence, or paragraph – a complex and highly insightful as well as illuminating idea. He’s been doing that for about fifty years, and his body of work holds up very well.
So Happy Happy Birthday, Thomas Sowell. Long may you live and grace us with your clear-headed wisdom.
A favorite of mine along with the late Walter Williams. Here is a link to some of Sowell’s best quotes: https://fee.org/articles/30-priceless-quotes-from-the-great-thomas-sowell/
Sowell and Williams, two priceless national treasures.
How much misery could have been avoided had anyone listened to those two men?
He taught me more about economics than everyone else put together.
He recounted once how he had seen the birth and death certificates of the people he was born to, and realized with a shock that he had not only lived longer than them both, he had lived longer than both of them combined.
@ Wendy > “He taught me more about economics than everyone else put together.”
So true, and I hope that is the hat tip to “Singing in the Rain” that I think it is.
https://www.quotes.net/mquote/86750
Lina Lamont:
Why, I make more money than – than – than Calvin Coolidge! Put together!
My second-most favorite line:
Don Lockwood:
Dignity. Always, dignity.
I’m now also a big fan of Rob Henderson, who coined Luxury Beliefs as a status competition among some elites. Sowell is far more comprehensive in detailing those beliefs, that vision, tho “Vision of the Anointed” is too awkward, even if more accurate.
I also get somebody’s X tweets called Thomas Sowell’s Quotes who most often tweets a nice quote or two by Sowell.
He’s been shadow censored due to being a very articulate Black conservative. Glad he’s at the Hoover institute, at Stanford.
I’m a huge fan of Sowell. So how in the world did I miss quote number 21 all my life?!
21) “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”
Thank you Sgt. Joe Friday for rectifying the situation.