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"40 Thomas Sowell Quotes & Sayings

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Born: 30 June 1930 | Economist |

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Help Truth Hear Want
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One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.

Caring Compassionate Conservatives Less
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If you want to get each individual's honest opinion, you don't want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

Allow Coordinate Each Get
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There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.

Complete Only Telling Truth
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Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Been Decades Good Has-Been
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What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

Down Ease Expect Forbid
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The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

Confuses Even Feeling He
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Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

Attention Corrected Facts Mistakes
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People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

Charity Conservatives Donate Higher
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If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

Always Believed Everyone Gotten
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The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

Academics Ask Department Diversity
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The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Anything Disregard Economics Enough
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Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

Because Considered Coordinated Effective
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The real minimum wage is zero.

Minimum Real Wage Zero
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Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America.

America Bracket Decade Imagine
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The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

About Concentrated Fact Find
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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.

About Assume Believe Care
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Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Barbarians Before Born Civilization
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Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

Agony Blood Cheap Cost
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Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

Baseball Baseball Game Clock Explained
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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Considerable Extent Ignorance Just
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The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

Any Because Explanation Happen
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Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

Against Competing Divorced Facts
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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.

Complexity Does Growing Imply
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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.

Accepts Blacks Bottom Class
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Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

Accounting Balanced Balanced Budget Budget
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Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.

Accomplished Actually Against Companies
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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.

Africa America Ancestors Been
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Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
Blatant Could Failure General
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People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
Anything Charge Enjoy Meetings
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The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
Basic Best Decide Most
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There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

Dishonorable Few Few Things Misleading
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People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

Hands Inevitably People Time
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If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

Accept Barbarism Be Prepared Civilization
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The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
About Egos Elites Masses
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Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
Articulate Doers More Since
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The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

Between Big Country Democrats
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You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

Bureaucrats Everything Never Nothing
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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.

Being Dangerous Decisions Hands
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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.

Administer Afford Amazing Bureaucracy
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Thomas Sowell Quotes & Sayings