If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.
THOMAS SOWELLFor 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.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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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.
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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.
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If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
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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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It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
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As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.
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The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.
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One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.
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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.
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It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.
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Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous.
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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.
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Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
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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.
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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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Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
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Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
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Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
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A society in which such decisions can only be made by males has thrown away half of its knowledge, talents, and insights.
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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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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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Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
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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.
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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.
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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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No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.
THOMAS SOWELL