Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
THOMAS SOWELLNo-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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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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Intellect is not wisdom.
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No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.
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Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.
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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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It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
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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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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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If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
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People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid.
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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
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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.
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Reality does not go away when it is ignored.
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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.
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Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.
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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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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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The really painful surprise is that so many people based their hopes on his words, rather than on the record of his deeds.
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Heedless of the past, we are flying blind into the future.
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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.
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No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.
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Economics is a study of cause and effect relationships in an economy.
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It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.
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It would be very heard, for example, a basketball owner, no matter how racist he was, to try to operate without Blacks. It would be suicidal.
THOMAS SOWELL