When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
THOMAS SOWELLSocialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
-
-
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 -
No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.
THOMAS SOWELL -
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 -
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 -
It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.
THOMAS SOWELL -
The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.
THOMAS SOWELL -
A society in which such decisions can only be made by males has thrown away half of its knowledge, talents, and insights.
THOMAS SOWELL -
In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.
THOMAS SOWELL -
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
THOMAS SOWELL -
Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?
THOMAS SOWELL -
Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
THOMAS SOWELL -
No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.
THOMAS SOWELL -
No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
THOMAS SOWELL -
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.
THOMAS SOWELL -
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 -
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
THOMAS SOWELL -
It 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.
THOMAS SOWELL -
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
THOMAS SOWELL -
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 -
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 -
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
THOMAS SOWELL -
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
THOMAS SOWELL -
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
THOMAS SOWELL -
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.
THOMAS SOWELL -
What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
THOMAS SOWELL -
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