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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
Intention
Effects
Policy
Learned
Public
Evaluate
Intentions
Opposed

More quotes by Walter E. Williams

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True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.
Walter E. Williams
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Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.
Walter E. Williams
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The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
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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No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong.
Walter E. Williams
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If you hate my guts and have designs to hurt me, and I see you building a cannon aimed at my house, I am not going to wait for you to finish construction.
Walter E. Williams
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The greatest percentage of poverty is found in female-headed households. Over 70 percent of female-headed households are poor. A large percentage of poor people are children (17 percent) fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household.
Walter E. Williams
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Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, in government, the scum rises to the top.
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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One of the wonderful things about free markets is that the path to greater wealth comes not from looting, plundering and enslaving one's fellow man, as it has throughout most of human history, but by serving and pleasing him.
Walter E. Williams
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Multiculturalists argue that different cultural values are morally equivalent. That's nonsense.
Walter E. Williams
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Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good.
Walter E. Williams
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Democracy gives the aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be considered tyranny.
Walter E. Williams
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The difference between a thief and a congressman: When a thief steals your money, he doesn't expect you to thank him.
Walter E. Williams
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In general, presidents and congressmen have very limited power to do good for the economy and awesome power to do bad. The best good thing that politicians can do for the economy is to stop doing bad. In part, this can be achieved through reducing taxes and economic regulation, and staying out of our lives.
Walter E. Williams
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The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government.
Walter E. Williams
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Socialism is just another form of tyranny.
Walter E. Williams
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I prefer a thief to a Congressman. A thief will take your money and be on his way, but a Congressman will stand there and bore you with the reasons why he took it.
Walter E. Williams
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Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.
Walter E. Williams
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If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.
Walter E. Williams