Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.
THOMAS SOWELLReality does not go away when it is ignored.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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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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It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.
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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.
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People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid.
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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 really painful surprise is that so many people based their hopes on his words, rather than on the record of his deeds.
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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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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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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
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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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Justice at all costs’ is not justice.
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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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Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous.
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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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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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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.
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A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
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Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.
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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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What is called an educated person is often someone who has had a dangerously superficial exposure to a wide spectrum of subjects.
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Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.
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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
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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.
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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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Intellect is not wisdom.
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Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?
THOMAS SOWELL