O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

sexta-feira, 10 de maio de 2013

Thomas SowellL um intelectual completo (relacao de livros)

Ao encomendar, e receber, recentemente, um livro de Thomas Sowell, fui conferir, na sua página (http://www.tsowell.com/), suas demais publicações. A lista é impressionante, como vocês podem conferir abaixo.
Aliás, o livro que encomendei, e que recomendo, pois se trata de uma síntese de seu pensamento e posições, é este aqui:
The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Thomas Sowell

Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow
The Hoover Institution
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305



Thomas Sowell Books: 

BOOKS WRITTEN:
Intellectuals and Race,(2013)
Intellectuals and Society, second edition (2012)
Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, fourth edition (2011)
Intellectuals and Society (2010)
The Housing Boom and Bust, revised edition (2010)
The Housing Boom and Bust (2009)
Applied Economics (2009)
Economic Facts and Fallacies (2008)
A Conflict of Visions, revised edition (2007)
Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, third edition (2007)
A Man of Letters (2007)
On Classical Economics (2006)
Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005)
Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (2004)
Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, second edition (2004)
Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (2003)
The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late (2001)
Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy (2000)
A Personal Odyssey (2000)
The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999)
Conquests and Cultures: An International History (1998)
Late-Talking Children (1997)
Migrations and Cultures: A World View (1996)
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for
      Social Policy (1995)
Race and Culture: A World View (1994)
Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas (1993)
Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (1990)
Choosing a College: A Guide for Parents and Students (1989)
A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (1987)
Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (1985)
Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality (1984)
The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective (1983)
Ethnic America: A History (1981)
Markets and Minorities (1981)
Knowledge and Decisions (1980)
Race and Economics (1975)
Classical Economics Reconsidered (1974)
Say's Law: An Historical Analysis (1972)
Black Education: Myths and Tragedies (1972)
Economics: Analysis and Issues (1971)

BOOKS OF COLLECTED WRITINGS:
The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)
Dismantling America: and Other Controversial Essays (2010)
Ever Wonder Why? (2006)
Controversial Essays (2002)
Barbarians Inside the Gates (1999)
Is Reality Optional? (1993)
Compassion versus Guilt (1987)
Education: Assumptions versus History (1986)
Pink and Brown People (1981)
Essays and Data on American Ethnic Groups (1978)

MONOGRAPHS:
"Trickle Down" Theory and "Tax Cuts for the Rich" (2012)
Judicial Activism Reconsidered (1989)
Affirmative Action Reconsidered: Was it Necessary in Academia?(1975)

E aqui suas frases e citações preferidas: 

...I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.
--David Ricardo1

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false. 
--Paul Johnson2


Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. 
-- T. S. ELiot3

There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men. 
--Edmund Burke4

...you can never be happy and dress yourself solely in the glass of other men's approval. 
--Nicholas Flood Davis5

If I could think that I had sent a spark to those who come after I should be ready to say Goodbye.
--Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes6

We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.
-- F. A. Hayek7

You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
--Lyndon B. Johnson8

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.
--Joseph A. Schumpeter9

Civilization is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization would die, and we should be savages again.
--Will and Ariel Durant10

Certainly, it is a world of scarcity. But the scarcity is not confined to iron ore and arable land. The most constricting scarcities are those of character and personality.
--William R. Allen11

The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice.
--Linda Bowles12

This war was a revolution against the moral basis of civilization. It was conceived by the Nazis in conscious contempt for the life, dignity and freedom of individual man and deliberately prosecuted by means of slavery, starvation and the mass destruction of noncombatants' lives. It was a revolution against the human soul.
--Time, May 14, 194513

The gods mercifully gave mankind this little moment of peace between the religious fanaticisms of the past and the fanaticisms of class and race that were speedily to arise and dominate time to come.
-- G. M. Trevelyan14

Publicly inconsolable about the fact that racism continues, these activists seem privately terrified that it has abated.
--Dinesh D'Souza15

Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!
--Frederick Douglass16


Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
-- C. S. Lewis17

...mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent...
--Adam Smith18

Examine the records of history, recollect what has happened within the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the greatly unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you may have either read of, or hear of, or remember, and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to set still and to be contented.
--Adam Smith19

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.
--Eric Hoffer20

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.
--Eric Hoffer 21

A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will.
--Eric Hoffer22

The intellectuals and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us.
--Eric Hoffer23

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
--Eric Hoffer24

From my earliest childhood I have been toiling & wearing my heart out for other people, who took all I could do & suffer for them as no more than their just dues.
--John Randolph25

. . .time misspent and faculties mis-employed, and senses jaded by labor, or impaired by excess, cannot be recalled any more than that freshness of the heart, before it has become aware of the deceits of others, and of its own.
--John Randolph26

Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right?
--Jean-Baptiste Say27

   To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
    But life without meaning is the torture
    Of restlessness and vague desire--
    It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
--Edgar Lee Masters28 

N O T E S
  1. The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. VII, p. 372. 
  2. Paul Johnson, The Quotable Paul Johnson: A Topical Compilation of His Wit, Wisdom and Satire, edited by George J. Marlin, et al (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), p. 138. 
  3. T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party, (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), p. 111. 
  4. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. 249. 
  5. Nicholas Flood Davis, The Irishman in Canada, p. vii. 
  6. Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes, edited by Max Lerner (New York: Modern Library), p. 451. 
  7. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972) 
  8. Robert L. Hardesty, The Johnson Years: The Difference He Made (Austin: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, 1993), p. 181. 
  9. Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 43n. 
  10. Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, p. 101. 
  11. William R. Allen, "Bunnie Rabbit, Winnie, and the Grand Plan," California Political Review, Winter 1993, p. 13. 
  12. Linda Bowles, "The Weaning Process, " Washington Times, December 20, 1994, p. A16. 
  13. Time, May 14, 1945, p. 17. 
  14. G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History, p. 354. 
  15. Dinesh D'Souza, The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 554. 
  16. Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants," Negro Social and Political Thought 1850-1920: Representative Texts, edited by Howard Brotz (New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1962), p. 283. 
  17. C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans,2002), p. 292. 
  18. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 170. 
  19. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 252. 
  20. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, p. 107. 
  21. Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, p. 181. 
  22. Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time, p. 83. 
  23. Eric Hoffer, First Things, Last Things, p. 65. 
  24. Eric Hoffer, First Things, Last Things, p. 71. 
  25. John Randolph, Collected Letters of John Randolph of Roanoke to Dr. John Brockenbrough, 1812-1833, edited by Kenneth Shorey (New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Books, 1988), p. 124 
  26. John Randolph, Collected Letters of John Randolph of Roanoke to Dr. John Brockenbrough: 1812-1833, edited by Kenneth Shorey (New Brunswick, N. J.: Transaction Books, 1988), p. 53 
  27. Jeam-Baptiste Say, An Economist in Troubled Times: Writings Selected and Translated by R. R. Palmer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), p. 154. 
  28. Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p.87. 


2 comentários:

Wagner Bento disse...

Há 2 traduções para o português:

http://www.brunogarschagen.com/2012/02/dois-grandes-livros-do-thomas-sowell.html

Gabriel disse...

Gênio. Li o seu "Basic Economics" ao mesmo tempo que cursava "Introdução a Economia" na minha faculdade. Foi uma experiência instigante e reveladora, perceber o gigantesco gap entre o consenso acadêmico e a análise lógica e arguta de Sowell. O que muita gente enxerga como conservadorismo radical é mero fruto de encadeamentos lógicos muito simples, que só não nos são evidentes porque nossa mente está sempre coberta pelo establishment.