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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?

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Fire
Criticize
Anyone
Libertarian
Matter
Turned
Would
Expect
Policy
Disastrously
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Criticizes
Hear
Libertarianism
Economic
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Too many policies, programs and institutions are judged by what they are supposed to do, rather than by what they actually do and the consequences of their actions.
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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.
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The curse of the intelligentsia is their ability to rationalize and re-define. Ordinary people, lacking that gift, are forced to face reality.
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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 then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.
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There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
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In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media.
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You do not need proof for what people want to believe.
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We might have been better off if the question of Obama's patriotism had been raised before he was first elected. Never should we ignore so many red flag warnings again.
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To say the Constitution is living is to say that it's dead.
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If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
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Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
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Economics is concerned with what emerges, not what anyone intended.
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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.
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Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain.
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In the wake of the housing debacle in California, more people are buying less expensive homes, making bigger down payments, and staying away from 'creative' and risky financing. It is amazing how fast people learn when they are not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.
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You may have the right to live anyway you like, but you don't have a right to have other people like it. Respect it or pay for it.
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The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution.
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There are only two economists in Congress and hundreds of lawyers. Does that explain why the government is in such a mess?
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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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