Excerpt from PJ Media
Written by Tyler O'Neil
Economist Thomas Sowell has long been one of the leading lights of the conservative movement in America. His path from high school dropout to renowned professor has inspired thousands and his insights on the history of race relations in America are invaluable.
On Tuesday, Sowell announced his retirement from 25 years of writing political columns. The professor is putting his pen to rest following an "awful" political year. During a stay in Yosemite National Park, he realized that "four consecutive days without seeing a newspaper or a television news program" felt "wonderful."
After dropping out of high school at age 17, Sowell graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University at age 28, and earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago a decade later. He taught economics at several universities, and has been a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University since 1980.
Here is a sampling of [his] brilliance and wit.
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."