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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

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Humans
Thousands
Unquestionably
People
Meetings
Blindly
Innocent
Reacting
Murder
Defending
Excuse
Preventing
Tragedy
Hundreds
Fate
Dozen
Human
Meeting

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The curse of the intelligentsia is their ability to rationalize and re-define. Ordinary people, lacking that gift, are forced to face reality.
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When government takes away options, it is bound to make some people worse off, even with intrinsicallly good intentions behind that government intervention.
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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.
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The government is indeed an institution, but the market is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste.
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When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
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Relevance is not something you can predict. It is something you discover after the fact.
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The idea that money is corrupting innocent politicians would be laughable if it did not lead to such dangerous legislation.
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The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution.
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There are no solutions there are only trade-offs.
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Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all - inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all.
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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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Too many policies, programs and institutions are judged by what they are supposed to do, rather than by what they actually do and the consequences of their actions.
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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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Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.
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We're not a socialist country, because the socialists believe in government ownership in the means of production, but the fascists believe that the government should have private ownership and the politicians should tell people how to run the businesses. So that's the route we seem to be going.
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When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can't help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.
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