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 SOWELLWhat is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
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It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.
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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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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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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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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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What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
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There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.
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It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
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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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Intellect is not wisdom.
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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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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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People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
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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.
THOMAS SOWELL






