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Both history and contemporary data show that countries prosper more when there are stable and dependable rules, under which people can make investments without having to fear unpredictable new government interventions before these investments can pay off.
Thomas Sowell
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Those who believe that "basic necessities" should belong to people as a matter of right ignore the implication — that people are to work only for amenities, frivolities, and ego. Will that mean more work or less work? And if less, where are all those "basic necessities" coming from that the government is supposed to hand out?
Thomas Sowell
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I'm always embarrassed when people say that I'm courageous. Soldiers are courageous. Policemen are courageous. Firemen are courageous. I just have a thick hide and disregard what silly people say.
Thomas Sowell
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Before the Iraq war I was quite disturbed by some of the neoconservatives, who were saying things like, "What is the point of being a superpower if you can't do such-and-such, take on these responsibilities?" The point of being a superpower is that people will leave you alone.
Thomas Sowell
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There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.
Thomas Sowell
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One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with the time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
Thomas Sowell
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The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.
Thomas Sowell
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People who think that they are being "exploited" should ask themselves whether they would be missed if they left, or whether people would say: "Good riddance"?
Thomas Sowell
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It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
Thomas Sowell
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People who talk incessantly about "change" are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.
Thomas Sowell
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If I could offer one piece of advice to young people thinking about their future, it would be this: Don't preconceive. Find out what the opportunities are.
Thomas Sowell
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Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.
Thomas Sowell
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What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials.
Thomas Sowell
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In a world where young blacks, especially, are bombarded with claims that they are being unfairly targeted by police, and where a general attitude of belligerence is being promoted literally in word and song, it is hard not to wonder whether some people's responses to policemen do not have something to do with the policemen's responses to them. Neither the police nor people in any other occupation always do what is right but automatic belligerence is not the answer.
Thomas Sowell
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A lot of what is called 'public service' consists of making hoops for other people to jump through. It is a great career for those who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.
Thomas Sowell
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Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of "diversity" that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen — written in blood — from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to the Philippines. It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.
Thomas Sowell
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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. Know-it-alls in the school system do not lose one dime or one hour's sleep if their bright ideas turn out to be all wrong, or even disastrous, for the child.
Thomas Sowell
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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 Sowell
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Blacks were not enslaved because they were black, but because they were available at the time. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black slave was brought to the Western Hemisphere. Only late in history were human beings even capable of crossing an ocean to get millions of other human beings of a different race. In the thousands of years before that, not only did Europeans enslave other Europeans, Asians enslaved other Asians, Africans enslaved other Africans, and the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other native peoples of the Western Hemisphere.
Thomas Sowell
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In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the: process: by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong-surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences.
Thomas Sowell
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Many of the words and phrases used in the media and among academics suggest that things simply: happen: to people, rather than be being caused by their own choices and behavior. Thus there is said to be an 'epidemic' of teenage pregnancy, or of drug usage, as if these things were like the flu that people catch just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Thomas Sowell
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The key feature of Communist propaganda has been the depiction of people who are more productive as mere exploiters of others.
Thomas Sowell
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Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.
Thomas Sowell
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You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.
Thomas Sowell
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What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.
Thomas Sowell
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Quote of the day
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
Georges Bataille
Thomas Sowell
Born:
June 30, 1930
(age 93)
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