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 SOWELLThe 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.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.
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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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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.
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Economics is a study of cause and effect relationships in an economy.
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Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
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Intellect is not wisdom.
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The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
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No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.
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Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.
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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
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I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.
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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.
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When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
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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.
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One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Justice at all costs’ is not justice.
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Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.
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Everyone may be called “comrade,” but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.
THOMAS SOWELL