"If the truth is boring, civilization is..." - Quote by Thomas Sowell
If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback.
More by Thomas Sowell
“The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.”
“The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one's own behavior.”
“Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics. Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy.”
More on Civilization
“Further march of civilization seems to employ increasing domination of man over beast, together with a growingly humane method of using them.”
“He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give access to themasterpieces of art and nature, is the problem of civilization.”
“Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.”
More on Truth
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
“However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.”
“Truth and sincerity have a certain distinguishing native lustre about them which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame, that cannot be painted.”