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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.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Vision
Divorced
Economy
Theories
Speak
Competing
Facts
Isolated
Divorce
Curiosity
Mere
Curiosities
Theory
Visions

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Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.
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The minimum wage law very cleverly is misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero. That is what many inexperienced and low skilled people receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.
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'Global warming' is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.
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The political mirage of something for nothing, from leaders who 'care,' has ruined many a nation.
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You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down.
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Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.
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No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.
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Too often the past has been twisted to fit the visions and agendas of the present.
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Young people in general - and young women in particular - need to understand that they cannot retrieve in their forties the opportunities they threw away in their twenties.
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People used to say, Ignorance is no excuse. Today, ignorance is no problem. After all, you have a right to your own opinion - and self-esteem to boot.
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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.
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The left takes its vision seriously - more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.
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Since the government creates no wealth, it can only transfer the wealth required to hire people. Even if the government creates a million jobs, that is not a net increase in jobs, when the money that pays for those jobs is taken from the private sector, which loses that much ability to create private jobs.
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If you don't control the borders, it doesn't matter what immigration laws you have.
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The principles applied in economic processes are general social principles.
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Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.
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Most people who read The Communist Manifesto probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives, and who nevertheless spoke boldly in the name of the workers. Thomas Sowell .
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Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
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Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.
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If you believe in equal rights, then what do “women’s rights,” “gay rights,” etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.
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