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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Substitute
Rhetoric
Substitutes
Reality

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

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Barack Obama's vision of America is one in which a President of the United States can fire the head of General Motors, tell banks how to bank, control the medical system and take charge of all sorts of other activities for which neither he nor other politicians have any expertise or experience.
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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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One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.
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There are 3 questions that would destroy most of the arguments of the Left. The first is - compared to what? The second is - at what cost? And the third is - what hard evidence do you have?
Thomas Sowell
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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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Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
Thomas Sowell
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How much more of an injustice is it that people who work get more money than people who don't work?
Thomas Sowell
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Envy plus rhetoric equals social justice..
Thomas Sowell
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The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool.
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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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.
Thomas Sowell
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A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.
Thomas Sowell
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Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.
Thomas Sowell
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Has Obama ever grown even a potted plant, much less a business, a bank, a hospital or any of the numerous other institutions whose decisions he wants to control and override? But he can talk glibly about growing the economy. Arrogance is no substitute for experience. That is why the country is in the mess it is in now.
Thomas Sowell
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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.
Thomas Sowell
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An inmate in a Florida prison wrote to agree with me on the availability of guns, saying that a 'criminal can and will get a stolen gun faster than you can get your car washed.' He also points out that many criminals prefer guns gotten illegally, since they will be harder to trace.
Thomas Sowell
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People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.
Thomas Sowell
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When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is 'control.' That is what the political left is all about, as you can see by the incessant creation of new restrictions in places where they are strongly entrenched in power, such as San Francisco or New York.
Thomas Sowell
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While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.
Thomas Sowell
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If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.
Thomas Sowell