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Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.
Thomas Sowell
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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Something
Data
Never
Cry
Happened
Asks
Actually
Government
Nothing
Even
Compared
More quotes by Thomas Sowell
The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others.
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The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.
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If you don't believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children.
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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.
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People who decry the fact that businesses are in business just to make money seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want.
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Benedict Arnold was a war hero, wounded in battle--before he turned against his country. Hitler was likewise a decorated and wounded veteran of the First World War. Being a war hero is not a lifetime...exempt[ion]...from responsibility for what you do thereafter.
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Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected.
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The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.
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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.
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One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.
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You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
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When you start off by telling those who disagree with you that they are not merely in error but in sin, how much of a dialogue do you expect?
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Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated - preemptively and unilaterally, if necessary.
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We're not a socialist country, because the socialists believe in government ownership in the means of production, but the fascists believe that the government should have private ownership and the politicians should tell people how to run the businesses. So that's the route we seem to be going.
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The principles applied in economic processes are general social principles.
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The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer - and they don't want explanations that do not give them that.
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Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists'
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What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.
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No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?
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