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Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.
Thomas Sowell
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What is called 'capitalism' might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.
Thomas Sowell
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For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.
Thomas Sowell
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People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
Thomas Sowell
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As far as party primaries are concerned, both Republican - and Democratic - Party primaries are dominated by the most zealous voters, whose views may not reflect the views of most members of their own respective parties, much less the views of those who are going to vote in the November general election.
Thomas Sowell
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If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.
Thomas Sowell
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There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.
Thomas Sowell
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American society in recent years has been imitating behavior patterns that have produced negative - and sometimes catastrophic - consequences in many other countries around the world.
Thomas Sowell
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Compassion is good but politicians have turned compassion into the welfare state.
Thomas Sowell
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The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be 'materialistic' and 'greedy' to want to keep what you have earned. But it is 'idealistic' to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself.
Thomas Sowell
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What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
Thomas Sowell
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I am so old that I can remember when liberals were liberal - instead of being intolerant of anything and anybody that is not politically correct.
Thomas Sowell
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The principles applied in economic processes are general social principles.
Thomas Sowell
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The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution.
Thomas Sowell
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The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits ever since 1994. You would never learn that from most of the media. Similarly you look at those blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among those blacks who have dropped out of high school. So it’s not being black; it’s a way of life. Unfortunately, the way of life is being celebrated not only in rap music, but among the intelligentsia, is a way of life that leads to a lot of very big problems for most people.
Thomas Sowell
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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
Thomas Sowell
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The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from 'society,' rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by 'society'.
Thomas Sowell
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Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.
Thomas Sowell
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Organizational progress parallels that in science and technology, permitting ultimate simplicity through intermediate complexity.
Thomas Sowell
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Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
Thomas Sowell
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In the United States, liberals have made it virtually impossible to increase the supply of oil by banning drilling in all sorts of places and preventing any new refinery from being built anywhere in the country in the last 30 years.
Thomas Sowell
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Those who automatically say that the social pathology of the ghetto is due to poverty discrimination and the like cannot explain why such pathology was far less prevalent in the 1950s, when poverty and discrimination were worse. But there were not nearly as many grievance mongers and race hustlers then.
Thomas Sowell
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The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.
Thomas Sowell
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One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and calloused sacrifices of others, became in power a system whose selfishness and callousness toward others made the sins of capitalism pale.
Thomas Sowell
