Jonathan Potthast

“No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk.
What do the poor most need? They need to stop being poor. And how can that be done, on a mass scale, except by an economy that creates vastly more wealth? Yet the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it.”
― Thomas Sowell, Controversial Essays

“Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions — and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.

For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not have arisen.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories

“In fact, had it been given to our eyes of the
flesh to gaze into the consciences of others, we should be
able to judge a man much more surely according to what he
dreams, than according to what he thinks. There is will in
thought, there is none in dreams. Revery, which is utterly
spontaneous, takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the
ideal, the form of our spirit. Nothing proceeds more directly
and more sincerely from the very depth of our soul, than
our unpremeditated and boundless aspirations towards the
splendors of destiny. In these aspirations, much more than
in deliberate, rational coordinated ideas, is the real character
of a man to be found. Our chimeras are the things which
the most resemble us. Each one of us dreams of the unknown
and the impossible in accordance with his nature.”
― Victor Hugo