Thomas Sowell Quotes
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Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain.
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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.
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People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
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Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened.
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...Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.
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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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People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?
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Much of what sophisticates loftily refer to as the "complexityof the real world is in fact the inconsistency in their own minds.
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What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
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Just as members of American teachers unions often send their own children to private schools, so unionized workers at government-run hospitals in Britain have insurance that allows them to go to private hospitals. In both cases, those on the inside realize how bad these institutions are, regardless of what they say to those on the outside.
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Economics is concerned with what emerges, not what anyone intended.
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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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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.
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How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?
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Doing the right thing is fun. If nothing else, it surprises people.
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Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.
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The grand delusion of contemporary liberals is that they have both the right and the ability to move their fellow creatures around like blocks of wood - and that the end results will be no different than if people had voluntarily chosen the same action
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There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.
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I hate to make predictions, but I think the economy is going to be permanently changed for the worse. I think our foreign policy is going to lead to changes that will be definitely for the worse, particularly if we drift into a nuclear Iran, which I gather that's what the administration is doing.
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In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities.
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I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
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I hate to think that someday Americans will be looking at the ruins of their cities and saying that this happened because their leaders were afraid of the word unilateral.
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The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial prinicple will become harmful if carried far enough.
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Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensations for injustices - leading to worsening behavior by the recipients.