Sublime

The technocrats represented a moral principle, however nonideological they wished to appear. That moral principle was the imperative toward efficiency in governance and all other spheres. It was therefore the expertise not of the plumber that was praised but of the manager, the professional, and the intellectual whose expertise was certified by the

What separates twenty-first-century humans from their cave-dwelling ancestors isn’t raw intellectual power but a good curriculum.

purpose of education.

people’s identity, or their self-understanding, can greatly matter.

The more we try to learn and understand the lives being led by other people—the more we search for a golden mean of empathy—the less we will find it permissible to treat them with cruelty.

Unreasonable distributions of wealth have always turned their fire on reason.

Socrates—who, like Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement.

“Programs should be judged based on results, not intentions.” —Milton Friedman,