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“If stupid hippies hadn't killed nuclear power, we'd have nuclear power plants, safer and cheaper than coal-fired plants, all over, and electric cars really would be zero emissions.”
― Penn Jillette, Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales

“What do we learn from all of this? COVID-19 is a disease that makes some people sick, proves fatal to a few, and does nothing to the rest. Like any annual flu.”
― Karina Reiss, Corona, False Alarm?: Facts and Figures

“In short, honesty is more than a moral principle. It is also a major economic factor. While government can do little to create honesty directly, in various ways it can indirectly either support or undermine the traditions on which honest conduct is based. This it can do by what it teaches in its schools, by the examples set by public officials, or by the laws that it passes. These laws can create incentives toward either moral or immoral conduct. Where laws create a situation in which the only way to avoid ruinous losses is by violating the law, the government is in effect reducing public respect for laws in general, as well as rewarding specific dishonest behavior.”
― Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy

“I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my thirty years of teaching: schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very, very hard, the institution is psychopathic — it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to a different cell where he must memorize that humans and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling