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The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial prinicple will become harmful if carried far enough.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Means
Diminishing
Science
Harmful
Become
Returns
Enough
Beneficial
Mean
Statistics
Even
Carried
Return
Law

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Before the Iraq war I was quite disturbed by some of the neoconservatives, who were saying things like, What is the point of being a superpower if you can't do such-and-such, take on these responsibilities? The point of being a superpower is that people will leave you alone.
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People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.
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A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.
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If you can't beat them or join them, then do something weird. No matter how much the passengers eat, the weight of the plane stays the same. Do you sometimes feel that you are necessary but not sufficient?
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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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I am so old that I can remember when liberals were liberal - instead of being intolerant of anything and anybody that is not politically correct.
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No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.
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What is called 'capitalism' might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.
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What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.
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I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.
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The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.
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