The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.
THOMAS SOWELLNo matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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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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When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
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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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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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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.
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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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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 has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
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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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Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
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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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We should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
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Intellect is not wisdom.
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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.
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Don’t you get tired of seeing so many “non-conformists” with the same non-conformist look?
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There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.
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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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Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?
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I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.
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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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Reality does not go away when it is ignored.
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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
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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.
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The history of which peoples, nations, or civilizations have conquered or enslaved which other peoples, nations, or civilizations has been largely a history of who has been in a position to do so.
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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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The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.
THOMAS SOWELL