best Sowell quote so far

My reposting of Stephen Carson's LRC blog on downtown warzones didn't draw any comments, but has inspired some correspondence, including some very helpful exchanges with Carson himself, who is far better-read than I am on these subjects. He offers this as his favorite Thomas Sowell quotation:

"Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what has worked with what sounded good. In area after area -- crime, education, housing, race relations -- the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

Thomas Sowell's website is here: www.tsowell.com

Some more Sowell quotes are here.