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There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Waste
Bigger
Necessary
Time

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
Thomas Sowell
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In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.
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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.
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In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.
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In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment. The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics.
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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.
Thomas Sowell
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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.
Thomas Sowell
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Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.
Thomas Sowell
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Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden.
Thomas Sowell
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The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution.
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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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Has Obama ever grown even a potted plant, much less a business, a bank, a hospital or any of the numerous other institutions whose decisions he wants to control and override? But he can talk glibly about growing the economy. Arrogance is no substitute for experience. That is why the country is in the mess it is in now.
Thomas Sowell
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The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.
Thomas Sowell
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Social Engineering - The art of replacing what works with what sounds good.
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.
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Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options
Thomas Sowell
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To say that 'wealth in America is so unfairly distributed in America,' as Ronald Dworkin does, is grossly misleading when most wealth in the United States is not distributed: at all. People create it, earn it, save it, and spend it.
Thomas Sowell
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It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.
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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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By the end of the 20th century, liberals had again discredited themselves, to the point where they went back to calling themselves progressives to escape their past, much as people do when they declare bankruptcy.
Thomas Sowell