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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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In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people - and to hate those other people.
Thomas Sowell
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If sanity ever returns to our society and we stop taking pretentious elites seriously, one of the signs will be that the public will force the removal of those ugly pieces of twisted metal that are called 'art' in front of government buildings.
Thomas Sowell
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A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.
Thomas Sowell
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Apparently the only people who are supposed to be responsible are the taxpayers - and they are increasingly made responsible for other people's irresponsibility.
Thomas Sowell
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Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.
Thomas Sowell
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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?
Thomas Sowell
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Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other 90 percent of the people?"
Thomas Sowell
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Most of the people in the upper income brackets are not rich and do not have wealth sheltered offshore. They are typically working people who have finally reached their peak earning years after many years of far more modest incomes-and now see much of what they have worked for siphoned off by politicians, to the accompaniment of lofty rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell
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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.
Thomas Sowell
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What 'eminent domain' laws mean in practice is that politicians have a right to seize your property and turn it over to someone else, in order to gain campaign contributions and win votes.
Thomas Sowell
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People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge.
Thomas Sowell
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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.
Thomas Sowell
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Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism.
Thomas Sowell
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The idealism of the left is a very selfish idealism. In their war against 'the rich' and big business, they don't care how much collateral damage there is to workers who end up end up unemployed.
Thomas Sowell
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You don't send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like 'shooting an unarmed child,' when that 'child' was beating him bloody.
Thomas Sowell
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You need to be empathetic in your own personal life and we help our neighbors and our friends out who are struggling in our neighborhoods. But we don't make bad decisions based on empathy.
Thomas Sowell
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It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.
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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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.
Thomas Sowell
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The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.
Thomas Sowell
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If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves
Thomas Sowell
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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.
Thomas Sowell
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What freedom does a starving man have?" The answer is that starvation is a tragic human condition- perhaps more tragic than loss of freedom. That does not prevent these from being two different things.
Thomas Sowell
