Source: 2000s, A Personal Odyssey (2000), Ch. 5 : Halls of Ivy
Context: In the summer of 1959, as in the summer of 1957, I worked as a clerk-typist in the headquarters of the U. S. Public Health Service in Washington. The people I worked for were very nice and I grew to like them. One day, a man had a heart attack at around 5 PM, on the sidewalk outside the Public Health Service. He was taken inside to the nurse's room, where he was asked if he was a government employee. If he were, he would have been eligible to be taken to a medical facility there. Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results.
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Student Loans
1980s–1990s, Is Reality Optional? (1993)
Source: Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays
1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)
“Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance.”
Source: 2000s, A Personal Odyssey (2000), Ch. 5 : Halls of Ivy
Context: In the summer of 1959, as in the summer of 1957, I worked as a clerk-typist in the headquarters of the U. S. Public Health Service in Washington. The people I worked for were very nice and I grew to like them. One day, a man had a heart attack at around 5 PM, on the sidewalk outside the Public Health Service. He was taken inside to the nurse's room, where he was asked if he was a government employee. If he were, he would have been eligible to be taken to a medical facility there. Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results.
Social Deterioration
1980s–1990s, Is Reality Optional? (1993)
Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/05/01/random_thoughts, May 01, 2007
2000s
Source: Intellectuals and Society
Random Thought
2000s, Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays (2006)
Source: Knowledge And Decisions
“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”
Source: 1980s–1990s, Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 5 : Political Trade-Offs
Source: The Thomas Sowell Reader, New York: NY, Basic Books (2011) p. 144, Forbes magazine, "The survival of the left" (Sept. 8, 1997)
Random Thoughts http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell101705.asp, Oct. 17, 2005
2000s