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Too often what are called educated people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
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What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.
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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.
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Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.
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Love is a four-letter word, but you don't hear in nearly as often as you hear some other four-letter words. It may be a sign of our times that everyone talks openly about sex, but we seem to be embarrassed to talk about love.
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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 government does not have some magic wand that can 'bring down the cost of health care.' It can buy a smaller quantity or lower quality of medical care, as other countries with government-run medical care do.
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The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is.
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The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.
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Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.
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If you believe in equal rights, then what do “women’s rights,” “gay rights,” etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.
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Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational excellence, I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.
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Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.
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Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected.
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Stupid people can cause problems, but it usually takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.
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An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground.
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What freedom does a starving man have? The answer is that starvation is a tragic human condition- perhaps more tragic than loss of freedom. That does not prevent these from being two different things.
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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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Whenever someone refers to me as someone who happens to be black, I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.
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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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