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While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Often
Norm
Black
Claim
Social
Cultural
Others
Claims
Plea
Power
Level
Stifle
Personal
Rationalism
Levels
Norms
Individual
Autonomy

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The key fallacy of so called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.
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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.
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Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.
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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.
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If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.
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If you want to get each individual's honest opinion, you don't want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.
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Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped.
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Young people in general - and young women in particular - need to understand that they cannot retrieve in their forties the opportunities they threw away in their twenties.
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In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people - and to hate those other people.
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The great allure of government programs in general for many people is that these programs allow decisions to be made without having to worry about the constraints of prices, which confront people at every turn in a free market.
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If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.
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There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
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The government is now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s - use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations. To this day, we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s.
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Few professors would dare to publish research or teach a course debunking the claims made in various ethnic, gender, or other 'studies' courses.
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Whether as a radical student, a community organizer or a far left politician, Barack Obama's ideology has been based on a vision of the Haves versus the Have Nots. . .Obama's ideology is an ideology of envy, resentment, and payback.
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Government bailouts are like potato chips: You can't stop with just one.
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It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new 'solution' to society's 'problems.'
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Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on income distribution, the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
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