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Politicians exploit economic illiteracy.

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
Illiteracy
Exploit
Exploits
Politicians
Politician
Economic

More quotes by Walter E. Williams

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The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests. This bothers some people because they're more concerned with motives than with results.
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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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 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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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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Trying to get government to be as efficient as business is as hopeless as trying to teach cats to bark and dogs to meow.
Walter E. Williams
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Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but most of Africa is a continent without much hope for its people... What [Africa] needs, the West cannot give. ...what Africans need is personal liberty...[and] guarantees of private property rights and rule of law.
Walter E. Williams
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In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician's major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense that American education can be deemed a success.
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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Tyrants always condemn and seek to replace the market process with government coercion because tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrants think they should do.
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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Recent school shootings have lured ill-informed Americans into a war on our Second Amendment guarantees, led by the nation's tyrants and their useful idiots. ... The Second Amendment was given to us as protection against tyranny by the federal government and the Congress of the United States.
Walter E. Williams
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Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?
Walter E. Williams
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According to the Institute for International Economics, trade barriers cost American consumers $80 billion a year or more than $1,200 per family.
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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If grade inflation continues, a college bachelor's degree will have just as much credibility as a high school diploma.
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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Most of our country's serious problems can be laid at the feet of Congress and the White House and not at capitalism.
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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It's people seeking more for themselves that has produced a better life for all Americans.
Walter E. Williams