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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

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
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Entrepreneur Experience Learning Pain People Work
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
No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
THOMAS SOWELL

Deep Difference Equality Himself Justice Man
The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.
THOMAS SOWELL

Assume Automatic FAction Government Market Reason
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
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
I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.
THOMAS SOWELL

Earn Greedy Human Nature Money
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
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
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
Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world.
THOMAS SOWELL

Beautiful Creation Politics Ugly Vision World
Justice at all costs’ is not justice.
THOMAS SOWELL

Cost Deep Injustice Justice One Liner
Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
THOMAS SOWELL

Competition Consumer Effect Government Job Protect
The purpose of education is to give the student the intellectual tools to analyze, whether verbally or numerically, and to reach conclusions based on logic and evidence.
THOMAS SOWELL

Education Evidence Intellectual Logic Student
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
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
THOMAS SOWELL

Department Diversity Republic Social Time
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Bail Economy Life Lost Mortage People
It would be very heard, for example, a basketball owner, no matter how racist he was, to try to operate without Blacks. It would be suicidal.
THOMAS SOWELL

Basketball Black Black Lives Matter Racism Suicide
No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.
THOMAS SOWELL

Compassion Law People Tax
Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.
THOMAS SOWELL

Battle Peace People Violence War
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
Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
THOMAS SOWELL

Argument Extrapolation Ground Refuge
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
I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.
THOMAS SOWELL

Achievement Consider Inspirational Old People Remember
Failure is part of the natural cycle of business. Companies are born, companies die, capitalism moves forward.
THOMAS SOWELL

Born Business Capital Company Failure Inspirational
Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes.
THOMAS SOWELL

Attitude Fashion Galaxy Imagination Information People

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

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Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

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