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Economics is concerned with what emerges, not what anyone intended.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Anyone
Emerges
Intended
Economics
Concerned

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Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves 'progressives.' What arouses them are denunciations of social failures and accusations of wrong-doing.
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People who talk incessantly about change are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.
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Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?.
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The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances.
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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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It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.
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Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
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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.
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The difference between a policy and a crusade is that a policy is judged by its results, while a crusade is judged by how good it makes its crusaders feel.
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To say the Constitution is living is to say that it's dead.
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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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We should listen first and foremost to our own experience We should stop looking for saviors.Society has not existed for thousands of years because it had a succession of saviors. It's existed because it has institutions and processes through which people can realize their own goals.
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Another way of verbally masking elite preemption of other people's decisions is to use the word 'ask'-as in 'We are just asking everyone to pay their fair share.' But of course governments do not ask, they: tell. The Internal Revenue Service does not 'ask' for contributions. It takes.
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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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