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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.

Thomas Sowell

No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.
THOMAS SOWELL

Government Greedy Money Tax
Everyone may be called “comrade,” but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.
THOMAS SOWELL

Death Friendship Life Partner Power
The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves.
THOMAS SOWELL

Decide Deserve God Role
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Consequences Contribution Economics People Politics Society
In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.
THOMAS SOWELL

Acceptance Agree Evidence
One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.
THOMAS SOWELL

Appreciate DAngry Failure Honor People Trust
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Believe Claim Liberty People Politics Solution
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
Don’t you get tired of seeing so many “non-conformists” with the same non-conformist look?
THOMAS SOWELL

Comformist Tired
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Black Black Lives Matter Comparison Funny Parents White
The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.
THOMAS SOWELL

Fiction Journalist Media Perform Reality Window
The really painful surprise is that so many people based their hopes on his words, rather than on the record of his deeds.
THOMAS SOWELL

Deed Hope Pain People Record Surprise
Government “planning” is not an alternative to chaos. It is a pre-emption of other people’s plans.
THOMAS SOWELL

Alternative Choas Government Imagination People Planning
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
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Closer Depression Hurt Responsible Situation
No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
THOMAS SOWELL

Deep Difference Equality Himself Justice Man
What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.
THOMAS SOWELL

Advantage Civil Economics Knowledge Man Requirement
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Consitution Court Economics Government Politics
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Education Evidence Intellectual Logic Student
Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
THOMAS SOWELL

Exploitation Reality Rhetoric Substitute
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Advocate Government Party Politics Understand
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
When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
THOMAS SOWELL

Discrimination People Politics Treatment
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Achievement Century History Ideas Kill Power
Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.
THOMAS SOWELL

Age Care Courtesy Excuse Goodness Humble Young
Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
THOMAS SOWELL

Doer Specialty Talker
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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