"In the summer of 1959, as in the summer of 1957, I worked as a clerk-typist in the headquarters of the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington. The people I worked for were very nice and I grew to like them. One day, a man had a heart attack at around 5 PM, on the sidewalk outside the Public Health Service. He was taken inside to the nurse's room, where he was asked if he was a government employee. If he were, he would have been eligible to be taken to a medical facility there. Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United StatesEducators from the United StatesPeople from North CarolinaEconomists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 5 : Halls of Ivy
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Thomas Sowell
107 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Thomas Sowell →
Related Quotes
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
"Too many Republicans treat English as a second language, with Beltway lingo being their native tongue."
"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be …"
"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that wou…"
"Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare."
"Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production o…"
"Civilization is an enormous device for economizing on knowledge."
"Knowledge may be enjoyed as a speculative diversion, but it is needed for decision making."
"It is unnecessary to attempt any general rule as to where the overall balance lies in comparing the respective costs …"
"What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as the…"