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Anyone who does not understand the utter cynicism of politics does not understand politics.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Utter
Cynicism
Politics
Anyone
Understand
Political
Doe

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Most intellectuals outside the field of economics show remarkably little interest in learning even the basic fundamentals of economics. Yet they do not hesitate to make sweeping pronouncements about the economy in general, businesses in particular, and the many issues revolving around what is called 'income distribution'.
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By the end of the 20th century, liberals had again discredited themselves, to the point where they went back to calling themselves progressives to escape their past, much as people do when they declare bankruptcy.
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Stupid people can cause problems, but it usually takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.
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The more adaptability exists for a given kind of decision, the less risky it is to make plans for the future, and therefore the more likely it is that more people will make more plans in such areas.
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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.
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I wish that some way could be found to add up all the staggering costs imposed on millions of ordinary people, just so a relative handful of self-righteous environmental cultists can go around feeling puffed up with themselves.
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I am so old that I can remember when liberals were liberal - instead of being intolerant of anything and anybody that is not politically correct.
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All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.
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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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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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Virtually everything that the government does costs more than when the same thing is done in private industry - whether it is building housing, running prisons, collecting garbage, or innumerable other things. Why in the world would we imagine that health care would be the exception?
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Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
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What freedom does a starving man have? The answer is that starvation is a tragic human condition- perhaps more tragic than loss of freedom. That does not prevent these from being two different things.
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Both history and contemporary data show that countries prosper more when there are stable and dependable rules, under which people can make investments without having to fear unpredictable new government interventions before these investments can pay off.
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Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
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Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational excellence, I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.
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One of the beauties of an economy coordinated by price movements is that nobody has to understand it in order for it to work.
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The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.
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Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.
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The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
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