Quote

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.

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
Without
Attraction
Even
Allows
Ruinous
Price
Busybodies
Decisions
Impose
Paid
Fatal
Decision
Enables
Others
Prices
Government
Paying

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

Image
How much more of an injustice is it that people who work get more money than people who don't work?
Thomas Sowell
Image
What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
Thomas Sowell
Image
Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
Thomas Sowell
Image
All statements are true, if you are free to redefine their terms.
Thomas Sowell
Image
People who thing that they are getting something for nothing, by having government provide what they would otherwise have to buy in the private market, are not only kidding themselves by ignoring the taxes that government has to take from them in order to give them the appearance of something for nothing.
Thomas Sowell
Image
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.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on income distribution, the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Government central planning means over-riding other people's plans.
Thomas Sowell
Image
One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.
Thomas Sowell
Image
You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth - and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated.
Thomas Sowell
Image
If facts, logic, and scientific procedures are all just arbitrarily socially constructed notions, then all that is left is consensus--more specifically peer consensus, the kind of consensus that matters to adolescents or to many among the intelligentsia.
Thomas Sowell
Image
For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.
Thomas Sowell
Image
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.
Thomas Sowell
Image
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.
Thomas Sowell
Image
...Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Too many people - some of them judges - seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?
Thomas Sowell
Image
Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.
Thomas Sowell
Image
It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.
Thomas Sowell