Economics is more than just a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies.
THOMAS SOWELLIt doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.
More Thomas Sowell Quotes
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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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It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.
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Justice at all costs’ is not justice.
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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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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
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People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
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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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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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Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.
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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.
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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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The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
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The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
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When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
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Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama.
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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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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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Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.
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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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Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
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Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
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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.
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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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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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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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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.
THOMAS SOWELL