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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.

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
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
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
THOMAS SOWELL

Absence Born Civil Effect Generation Late
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Advantage Civil Economics Knowledge Man Requirement
It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
THOMAS SOWELL

Afford Government Pay People Positive Thinking
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Civil History Nation People Position
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
One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.
THOMAS SOWELL

Book Causation Correlation Forget Statistics
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
One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.
THOMAS SOWELL

Consequences Contribution Economics People Politics Society
Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
THOMAS SOWELL

Argument Extrapolation Ground Refuge
What all these lofty and vague phrases boil down to is that the court can impose things that the voters don’t want and the Constitution does not require, but which are in vogue in circles to which the court responds.
THOMAS SOWELL

Consitution Court Economics Government Politics
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
THOMAS SOWELL

DAngry Decision Imagination People Price Stupidity
Clearly, only very unequal intellectual and moral standing could justify having equality imposed, whether the people want it or not, as Dworkin suggests, and only very unequal power would make it possible.
THOMAS SOWELL

Economics Equality Justice People Politics Power
Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?
THOMAS SOWELL

Confidence Inspirational Possible Trust Wrong
Everyone may be called “comrade,” but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.
THOMAS SOWELL

Death Friendship Life Partner Power

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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