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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

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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Complex People Pride Realize Simplicity Truth
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Black Black Lives Matter Comparison Funny Parents White
Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.
THOMAS SOWELL

Deep Healing Inspirational Life Option Want
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
Intellect is not wisdom.
THOMAS SOWELL

Intelelct One Liner Wisdom
It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.
THOMAS SOWELL

Enjoyment Ignorance Moral People Superior Try
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
The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.
THOMAS SOWELL

Confuse Feelings Problem Reading Thinking Trouble
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
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
The only people I truly envy are those who can play a musical instrument and those who can eat anything they want without gaining weight.
THOMAS SOWELL

Ear Eat Instrument Music People True Weight Loss
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
Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
THOMAS SOWELL

Exploitation Reality Rhetoric Substitute
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
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
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

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.

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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.

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