Thomas Sowell Quotes
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Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.
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Those who wrote the Constitution clearly understood that power is dangerous and needs to be limited by being separated - separated not only into the three branches of the national government but also separated as between the whole national government, on the one hand, and the states and the people on the other.
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Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
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Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
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No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results.
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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.
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Wise men wrote the Constitution, but clever judges have been destroying it, bit by bit, turning it into an instrument of arbitrary judicial power, instead of a limitation on all government power.
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However little president Obama knows or cares about economics, he knows a lot about politics - and especially political rhetoric. 'High-speed rail' is simply another set of loft words to justify continued expansion of government spending. So are words like 'investment in education' or 'investment' in any number of other things, which serves the same political purpose.
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Everyone should be concerned about Internet anarchy in which anybody can pretend to be anybody else, unless something is done to stop it. If hoaxes like this go unchecked, who can believe anything they see on the Internet? What good would the Internet be then? If the people who control Internet web sites do not do anything, is that not an open invitation for government to step in? And does anybody want politicians to control what can go on the Internet?
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It is fascinating to watch politicians come up with 'solutions' to problems that are a direct result of their previous solutions. In many cases, the most efficient thing to do would be to repeal their previous solution and stop being so gung-ho for creating new solutions in the future. But, politically, that is the last thing they will do.
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How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro.
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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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Nothing as mundane as mere evidence can be allowed to threaten a vision so deeply satisfying.
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ANYONE who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them - instead of answering their arguments.
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The more adaptability exists for a given kind of decision, the less risky it is to make plans for the future, and therefore the more likely it is that more people will make more plans in such areas.
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The desire to order other people around and make them conform to one own's vision takes many forms.
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Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?
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The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.
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Any statistics can be extrapolated to the point where they show disaster.
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It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it "greed" to want to keep what you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes.
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The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
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In the long run, the greatest weapon of mass destruction is stupidity.
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Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.
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As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.