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The biggest difference between people is between those who are trying to do the right thing - whether or not they succeed - and those for whom the only question is how much they can get away with.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
People
Question
Differences
Whether
Away
Right
Thing
Biggest
Trying
Succeed
Much
Difference

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

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In the United States, liberals have made it virtually impossible [to increase the supply of oil] by banning drilling in all sorts of places and preventing any new refinery from being built anywhere in the country in the last 30 years.
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Child poverty in the United States declined after the work requirement was put in there. People realized that they had to work and people went out and worked and they got off welfare.
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The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool.
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People used to say, Ignorance is no excuse. Today, ignorance is no problem. After all, you have a right to your own opinion - and self-esteem to boot.
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The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer - and they don't want explanations that do not give them that.
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If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live.
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One of the beauties of an economy coordinated by price movements is that nobody has to understand it in order for it to work.
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When you start off by telling those who disagree with you that they are not merely in error but in sin, how much of a dialogue do you expect?
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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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In the wake of the housing debacle in California, more people are buying less expensive homes, making bigger down payments, and staying away from 'creative' and risky financing. It is amazing how fast people learn when they are not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.
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Don't you get tired of seeing so many non-conformists with the same non-conformist look?
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People who know nothing about advertising, nothing about pharmaceuticals, and nothing about economics have been loudly proclaiming that the drug companies spend too much on advertising - and demanding that the government pass laws based on their ignorance.
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There are only two economists in Congress and hundreds of lawyers. Does that explain why the government is in such a mess?
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Most of the founders of this country had day jobs for years. They were not career politicians. ... We need leaders with experience in the real world, not experience in the phony world of politics.
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Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.
Thomas Sowell
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Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad.
Thomas Sowell
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One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.
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You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth - and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated.
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You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.
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If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left.
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