Nick

“The wartime costs of prewar self-indulgences in pacifist moral preening and anti-military crusades by the intelligentsia were staggering in both blood and treasure.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

“Only the philosophers, apparently, are so insecure about the progress of their own subject that they still offer courses mired in antiquity.”
― Steven E. Landsburg, The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

“Even where the experts are untrammeled, what “all the experts” are most likely to agree on is the need for using expertise to deal with problems.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

“The phrase “Why die for Danzig?” was considered a hallmark of sophistication among the intelligentsia at the time, but was instead a sign of their dangerous talent for verbal virtuosity, which can pose questions in ways that make the desired answer almost inevitable, whatever the substantive merits or demerits of the issue. Contrary to one-day-at-a-time rationalism, the real question was not whether it was worth dying over the Rhineland, over Czechoslovakia, over Austrian annexation, or over the city of Danzig. The question was whether one recognized in the unfolding pattern of Hitler's actions a lethal threat.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society