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You do not need proof for what people want to believe.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
People
Proof
Need
Needs
Believe

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

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The minimum wage law very cleverly is misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero. That is what many inexperienced and low skilled people receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.
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Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.
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There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?
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The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.
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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.
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Too often the past has been twisted to fit the visions and agendas of the present.
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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
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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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Someone once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of our own ignorance. Our schools are depriving millions of students of that kind of knowledge by promoting self-esteem and encouraging them to have opinions on things of which they are grossly ignorant, if not misinformed.
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Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?.
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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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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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Sports are the reason I am out of shape. I watch them all on TV.
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Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
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If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves
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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.
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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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To say the Constitution is living is to say that it's dead.
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What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
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One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with the time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
Thomas Sowell