Quote

Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.

Thomas Sowell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Even
Special
Idealism
Way
Feeling
Virtually
People
Idea
Provides
Feelings
Highly
Ideas
Educated
Feel
Ridiculous
Feels
Accepted
Important
Intelligent
Confuse

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

Image
Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.
Thomas Sowell
Image
In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.
Thomas Sowell
Image
What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.
Thomas Sowell
Image
You don't send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like 'shooting an unarmed child,' when that 'child' was beating him bloody.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that the left has spawned. That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare states is only one example.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Any judicial nominee who has said that the Constitution means what it says, not what judges would like it to mean, is going to be called an 'extremist.' That person will be said to be 'out of the mainstream.' But the mainstream is itself the problem.
Thomas Sowell
Image
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.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The curse of the intelligentsia is their ability to rationalize and re-define. Ordinary people, lacking that gift, are forced to face reality.
Thomas Sowell
Image
To say the Constitution is living is to say that it's dead.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The political left has been weak on protecting society from criminals for more than two centuries.
Thomas Sowell
Image
However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society where others are free.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
Thomas Sowell
Image
People who have never run even a modest little business assert with great certainty and indignation that heads of multinational corporations are paid much more than they are worth. People who know nothing about medicine and nothing about economics unhesi.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market - contrary to rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell
Image
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.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.
Thomas Sowell