Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous.
THOMAS SOWELLIt 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.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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Whenever someone refers to me as someone “who happens to be black,” I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.
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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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Economics is a study of cause and effect relationships in an economy.
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It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
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Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
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Everyone may be called “comrade,” but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.
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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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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.
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Economics is more than just a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies.
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I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.
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Reality does not go away when it is ignored.
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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.
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Government “planning” is not an alternative to chaos. It is a pre-emption of other people’s plans.
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As an entrepreneur in India put it: ‘Indians have learned from painful experience that the state does not work on behalf of the people. More often than not, it works on behalf of itself.
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No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk.
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If politicians stopped meddling with things they don’t understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.
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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.
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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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The really painful surprise is that so many people based their hopes on his words, rather than on the record of his deeds.
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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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If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
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To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by society.
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Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama.
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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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The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
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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