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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Thomas Sowell

I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.
THOMAS SOWELL

Achievement Consider Inspirational Old People Remember
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Explanation Help Let Go People Tuth Yourself
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Alternative Choose Failure Hate People Success
No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.
THOMAS SOWELL

Blame Century Choose Culture Past
Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous.
THOMAS SOWELL

Disastrous Ideas Reality Social Wonderful
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

Concentration Ideas Institution Surprise Survive Work
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 SOWELL

Believe Judgement Play Racism Rule Standard
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

Economics Equality Justice People Politics Power
Don’t you get tired of seeing so many “non-conformists” with the same non-conformist look?
THOMAS SOWELL

Comformist Tired
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Bail Economy Life Lost Mortage People
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

Complex People Pride Realize Simplicity Truth
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Arrangement Economics Government Institution Market Situation
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
THOMAS SOWELL

Department Diversity Republic Social Time
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

Achievement Destroy Equality Freedom Interest People
When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
THOMAS SOWELL

Discrimination People Politics Treatment
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

Civil History Nation People Position
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
THOMAS SOWELL

Agony Blood Cheap Cost Freedom Price
Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
THOMAS SOWELL

Competition Consumer Effect Government Job Protect
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

Freedom Government Justice Law Liberty People
Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
THOMAS SOWELL

Case God Identity Mistake Remember Trouble
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Beautiful Creation Politics Ugly Vision World
A society in which such decisions can only be made by males has thrown away half of its knowledge, talents, and insights.
THOMAS SOWELL

Decision Insight Knowledge Society Talent Throw
What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
THOMAS SOWELL

Blood History Human Politics Story Treasure
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

Battle Peace People Violence War
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 SOWELL

Acceptance Education Ideas Intelligence People Virtue
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
THOMAS SOWELL

Evade Failure Ignorance Record Social
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
THOMAS SOWELL

Decade Goodness History Past replace Social World

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

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