What is called an educated person is often someone who has had a dangerously superficial exposure to a wide spectrum of subjects.
THOMAS SOWELLPeople are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
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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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Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
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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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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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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.
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There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.
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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.
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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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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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Intellect is not wisdom.
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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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Reality does not go away when it is ignored.
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The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
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If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.
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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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People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
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The purpose of education is to give the student the intellectual tools to analyze, whether verbally or numerically, and to reach conclusions based on logic and evidence.
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No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
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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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Don’t you get tired of seeing so many “non-conformists” with the same non-conformist look?
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We should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
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When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
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People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
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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.
THOMAS SOWELL