… is from page 21 of Thomas Sowell’s superb 1993 collection, Is Reality Optional?:
Government is a blunt instrument. Its policies should be limited to what blunt instruments can do. We gain nothing by pretending to know what we cannot know and to be able to do what we cannot do.
DBx: This truth is denied by many, and not least by proponents of industrial policy.
A corollary to the truth expressed here by Sowell is that these deniers believe in miracles.