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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

Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
THOMAS SOWELL

Case God Identity Mistake Remember Trouble
Economics is a study of cause and effect relationships in an economy.
THOMAS SOWELL

Cause Economics Economy Effect Relationship Study
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
There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
THOMAS SOWELL

Conservative Solution Trade
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
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Destroy People Responsiblity Role Society Vision
The government is indeed an institution, but “the market” is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste.
THOMAS SOWELL

Arrangement Economics Government Institution Market Situation
Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?
THOMAS SOWELL

Confidence Inspirational Possible Trust Wrong
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
The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
THOMAS SOWELL

Achievement Destroy Equality Freedom Interest People
Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
THOMAS SOWELL

Competition Consumer Effect Government Job Protect
We should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
THOMAS SOWELL

Concentration Ideas Institution Surprise Survive Work
In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.
THOMAS SOWELL

Acceptance Agree Evidence
Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.
THOMAS SOWELL

Confuse Democracy Different Freedom
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
No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.
THOMAS SOWELL

Blame Century Choose Culture Past

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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