In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.
THOMAS SOWELLOne of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
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Don’t you get tired of seeing so many “non-conformists” with the same non-conformist look?
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Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
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What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.
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The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves.
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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
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The history of which peoples, nations, or civilizations have conquered or enslaved which other peoples, nations, or civilizations has been largely a history of who has been in a position to do so.
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What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
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If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
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People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
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Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.
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If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
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Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.
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A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
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If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.
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What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.
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Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
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The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
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Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.
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The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
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Failure is part of the natural cycle of business. Companies are born, companies die, capitalism moves forward.
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As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.
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It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.
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People who pride themselves on their “complexity” and deride others for being “simplistic” should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.
THOMAS SOWELL