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I learned that you have to evaluate the effects of public policy as opposed to intentions.

Walter E. Williams

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Walter E. Williams
Age: 84 †
Born: 1936
Born: March 31
Died: 2020
Died: December 1
Columnist
Economist
Journalist
Radio Personality
University Teacher
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Walter Williams
Walter Edward Williams
Learned
Public
Evaluate
Intentions
Opposed
Intention
Effects
Policy

More quotes by Walter E. Williams

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Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place.
Walter E. Williams
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Charity is reaching into one's own pockets to assist his fellow man in need. Reaching into someone else's pocket to assist one's fellow man hardly qualifies as charity. When done privately, we deem it theft, and the individual risks jail time.
Walter E. Williams
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Profit is vital to human well-being. Profit is the payment to entrepreneurs just as wages are payments to labor, interest to capital and rent to land. In order to earn profits in free markets, entrepreneurs must identify and satisfy human wants and do so in a way that economizes on society's scarce resources.
Walter E. Williams
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All we have to do now is to inform the public that the payment of social security taxes is voluntary and watch the mass exodus.
Walter E. Williams
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The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
Walter E. Williams
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How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal apartheid is legal Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.
Walter E. Williams
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Politicians exploit economic illiteracy.
Walter E. Williams
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Minimum-wage laws are one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of racists.
Walter E. Williams
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You can bet the rent money that whatever politicians do will end up harming consumers. ... Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are to the devil. Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil.
Walter E. Williams
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The belief that society benefits from destruction is lunacy.
Walter E. Williams
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The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government.
Walter E. Williams
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Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty. We're working on a third generation which has little in the way of education about what our Constitution means and why it was written. Thus, we've fallen easy prey to charlatens, quacks, and hustlers.
Walter E. Williams
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Many of the wonderful achievements of the 20th century were the result of the pursuit of profits. Unfortunately, demagoguery has led to profits becoming a dirty word. Nonprofit is seen as more righteous, particularly when people pompously stand before us and declare, 'We're a nonprofit organization.'
Walter E. Williams
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Students who are alien and hostile to the education process ought to be removed. You say, What will we do with them? I say that's a secondary issue. The first priority is to stop thugs from making education impossible for everyone else.
Walter E. Williams
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Most Americans, who think Congress has a right to do anything for which they can get a majority vote, ignore the clearly written constitutional restraints on Congress.
Walter E. Williams
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The founders of our nation feared paper currency because it gave government the means to steal from its citizens.
Walter E. Williams
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An increasing amount of climate research suggests a possibility of global cooling.
Walter E. Williams
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Tariff policy beneficiaries are always visible, but its victims are mostly invisible. Politicians love this. The reason is simple: The beneficiaries know for whom to cast their ballots, and the victims don't know whom to blame for their calamity.
Walter E. Williams
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(F)or 50 years, the well-meaning leftist agenda has been able to do to blacks what Jim Crow and harsh discrimination could never have done: family breakdown, illegitimacy and low academic achievement.
Walter E. Williams
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Saying the Constitution is a living document is the same as saying we don't have a Constitution.
Walter E. Williams