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When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.

Thomas Sowell

For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.
THOMAS SOWELL

Dead Enlight Experience Human Past Tradition
Racism does not have a good track record. It’s been tried out for a long time and you’d think by now we’d want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.
THOMAS SOWELL

Character Management Racism Record Time
We should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
THOMAS SOWELL

Concentration Ideas Institution Surprise Survive Work
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
THOMAS SOWELL

Decade Goodness History Past replace Social World
Government “planning” is not an alternative to chaos. It is a pre-emption of other people’s plans.
THOMAS SOWELL

Alternative Choas Government Imagination People Planning
The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.
THOMAS SOWELL

Fiction Journalist Media Perform Reality Window
Heedless of the past, we are flying blind into the future.
THOMAS SOWELL

Blind Fly Future Past
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
THOMAS SOWELL

Explanation Help Let Go People Tuth Yourself
We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.
THOMAS SOWELL

Closer Depression Hurt Responsible Situation
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
THOMAS SOWELL

Decide Economics Inspirational Liberty
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Choose Decide Information Inspirational People Public
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
THOMAS SOWELL

Consider Ignorance Knowledge Realize
One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.
THOMAS SOWELL

Complain Produce Refuse Sad Time
What is called an educated person is often someone who has had a dangerously superficial exposure to a wide spectrum of subjects.
THOMAS SOWELL

DAngry Education Exposure Person Subject
Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
THOMAS SOWELL

Distribution Earn Economics Income Literature Money
Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
THOMAS SOWELL

Argument Extrapolation Ground Refuge

When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.

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When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.

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