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You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist's analysis.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Politician
Tooth
Approach
Economist
Political
Elected
May
Fairy
Like
Gotten
Politicians
Analysis
Teeth
Scoff

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When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.
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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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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.
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Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side
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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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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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The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.
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Stupid people can cause problems, but it usually takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.
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Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.
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Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a good thing to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.
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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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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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We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it.
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Government bailouts are like potato chips: You can't stop with just one.
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Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to 'change the United States of America,' the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.
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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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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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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 government is now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s - use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations. To this day, we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s.
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It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.
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