Quote

The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.

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
Fate
Dozen
Human
Meeting
Humans
Thousands
Unquestionably
People
Meetings
Blindly
Innocent
Reacting
Murder
Defending
Excuse
Preventing
Tragedy
Hundreds

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

Image
There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
Thomas Sowell
Image
What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.
Thomas Sowell
Image
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.
Thomas Sowell
Image
If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both parents working.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don't know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.
Thomas Sowell
Image
What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
Thomas Sowell
Image
If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a 'stimulus,' then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.
Thomas Sowell
Image
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
Image
One of the painfully sobering realizations that come from reading history is the utter incompetence that is possible among leaders of whole nations and empires - and the blind faith that such leaders can nevertheless inspire among the people who are enthralled by their words or their posturing.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Any policy is a success by sufficiently low standards and a failure by sufficiently high standards.
Thomas Sowell
Image
To say the Constitution is living is to say that it's dead.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The minimum wage law very cleverly is misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero. That is what many inexperienced and low skilled people receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.
Thomas Sowell
Image
In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
Thomas Sowell
Image
All justice is inherently social. Can someone on a desert island be either just or unjust?
Thomas Sowell
Image
'Global warming' is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Intellect is not wisdom.
Thomas Sowell