It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
THOMAS SOWELLIt has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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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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Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?
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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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One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.
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Intellect is not wisdom.
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Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
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Justice at all costs’ is not justice.
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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.
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Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.
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In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.
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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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The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.
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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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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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It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.
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The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
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As an entrepreneur in India put it: ‘Indians have learned from painful experience that the state does not work on behalf of the people. More often than not, it works on behalf of itself.
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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.
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When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
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Failure is part of the natural cycle of business. Companies are born, companies die, capitalism moves forward.
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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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It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
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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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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
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People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid.
THOMAS SOWELL