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 SOWELLOne 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.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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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.
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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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If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
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Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
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To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by society.
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Intellect is not wisdom.
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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.
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Heedless of the past, we are flying blind into the future.
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Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
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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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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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A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
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The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
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Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
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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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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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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.
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Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
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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.
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Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
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People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
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Reality does not go away when it is ignored.
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It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.
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When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
THOMAS SOWELL