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Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Rare
Everywhere
Knowledge
Ideas

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

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How much more of an injustice is it that people who work get more money than people who don't work?
Thomas Sowell
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The more adaptability exists for a given kind of decision, the less risky it is to make plans for the future, and therefore the more likely it is that more people will make more plans in such areas.
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The difference is that we have the hardest and most painful evidence that there was a Holocaust. But, for the global warming scenario that is causing such hysteria, we have only a movie made by a politician and mathematical models whose results change drastically when you change a few of the arbitrarily selected variables.
Thomas Sowell
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Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?
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The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing their votes.
Thomas Sowell
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Fairness' is one of the great mantras of the left. Since everyone has his own definition of fairness, that word is a blank check for the expansion of government power. What fairness means in practice is that third parties -- busybodies -- can prevent mutual accommodations by others.
Thomas Sowell
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Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated - preemptively and unilaterally, if necessary.
Thomas Sowell
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Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists'
Thomas Sowell
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It doesnt matter what you do if you dont do what matters. If you do what matters it doesnt matter what you do.
Thomas Sowell
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When a highly successful leader retires after a long career, it is very unlikely that his successor will be of comparable caliber. Anyone of similar ability and drive would have gone somewhere else, instead of waiting in the wings for years for a chance to show his own leadership.
Thomas Sowell
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Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed.
Thomas Sowell
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Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped.
Thomas Sowell
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In the long run, the greatest weapon of mass destruction is stupidity.
Thomas Sowell
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The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
Thomas Sowell
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No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results.
Thomas Sowell
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Let's face it, most of us are not half as smart as we may sometimes think we are-- and for intellectuals, not one-tenth as smart.
Thomas Sowell
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The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.
Thomas Sowell
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What all these lofty and vague phrases boil down to is that the court can impose things that the voters don't want and the Constitution does not require, but which are in vogue in circles to which the court responds.
Thomas Sowell
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Organizational progress parallels that in science and technology, permitting ultimate simplicity through intermediate complexity.
Thomas Sowell
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The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Thomas Sowell