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Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.

Thomas Sowell

Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.
THOMAS SOWELL

Age Care Courtesy Excuse Goodness Humble Young
Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?
THOMAS SOWELL

Confidence Inspirational Possible Trust Wrong
In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.
THOMAS SOWELL

Acceptance Agree Evidence
A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
THOMAS SOWELL

Ending Equality Freedom Society
The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.
THOMAS SOWELL

Freedom Government Liberty Money People World
It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.
THOMAS SOWELL

Brain Human Nature People Repetition Scary
Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
THOMAS SOWELL

Doer Specialty Talker
Justice at all costs’ is not justice.
THOMAS SOWELL

Cost Deep Injustice Justice One Liner
Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.
THOMAS SOWELL

Acceptance Education Ideas Intelligence People Virtue
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
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
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Advocate Government Party Politics Understand
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
THOMAS SOWELL

Agony Blood Cheap Cost Freedom Price
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

Alternative Choose Failure Hate People Success
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
Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
THOMAS SOWELL

Competition Consumer Effect Government Job Protect

Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.

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Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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