Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 496 of the 2011 revised and enlarged edition of Thomas Sowell’s 2009 book Intellectuals and Society (original emphasis):

Another common tactic and flaw in the arguments of the intelligentsia is eternalizing the transient. Thus statistical trends in the share of the nation’s income going to “the rich” (however defined) and “the poor” (however defined), treat the people in these different income brackets as if they are enduring residents in those brackets, despite all evidence that the turnover includes most of the people in these brackets, due to the mundane fact that most people begin their careers at the bottom and progress upward. The same principle of eternalizing the transient was also at the heart of the genetic determinism of the Progressive era intelligentsia, who took the demonstrable contemporary differences in achievements between different races, nations and civilizations as signs of innate superiority and inferiority – again, ignoring the changes over time (centuries in this case) in the relative achievements of races, nations and civilizations.