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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

Thomas Sowell

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
The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.
THOMAS SOWELL

Liar People Politics Reflection Satisfaction Shame
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
Economics is more than just a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies.
THOMAS SOWELL

Economics Pattern Puzzle
The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.
THOMAS SOWELL

Confuse Feelings Problem Reading Thinking Trouble
A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
THOMAS SOWELL

Ending Equality Freedom Society
People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
THOMAS SOWELL

Hand People Time Waste Wasted Time Work
I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.
THOMAS SOWELL

Earn Greedy Human Nature Money
People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
THOMAS SOWELL

Charge Excitement Meeting One Liner People
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
No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk.
THOMAS SOWELL

Capital Government Income Market Poor
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.
THOMAS SOWELL

Honesty Sarcastic Truth
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.
THOMAS SOWELL

Freedom Government Liberty Money People World
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
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
THOMAS SOWELL

Decide Economics Inspirational Liberty
For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.
THOMAS SOWELL

Dead Enlight Experience Human Past Tradition

There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

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