Quotes by Thomas Sowell
I never cease to be amazed at how often people throw around the lofty phrase "social justice" without the slightest effort to define it. It cannot be defined because it is an attitude masquerading as a principle.
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People who are forever ready to charge others with "greed" never apply that word to the government. But, if you think the government is never greedy, check out what the government does under the escheat laws and eminent domain.
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One of the reasons people don't bother to stop and think is that symbolism lets them feel good about themselves. They can go through life leaving havoc in their wake, while enjoying a warm glow of self-approval.
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If I were rich, I would have a plaque made up, and sent to every judge in America, bearing a statement made by Adam Smith more than two and a half centuries ago: "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
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If massive programs are the only hope to reduce violence in the ghetto, why was there so much less violence long before anyone ever thought of these programs?
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If crime is a product of poverty and discrimination as they say endlessly, why was there so much less of it when poverty and discrimination were much worse than today?
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One of the few compensations for growing old is accumulating memories and sharing them with others.
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Have we become a country whose leaders are charlatans, and whose people are sheep?
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Crises have long been seen as great opportunities to expand the federal government’s power while the people are too scared to object and before any opposition can get organized.
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My theory of how to get rid of poverty is to hold a meeting of all the leading experts on poverty somewhere in the middle of the Pacific and not let them go home for 10 years. When they came back, they would discover there was no more poverty.
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The black community has long been plagued by spellbinding orators who know how to turn the hopes and fears of others into dollars and cents for themselves.
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Sometimes I think that this is an era when sanity has become controversial.
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In area after area—crime, education, housing, race relations—the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.
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Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
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Neither the educational problems nor the propaganda problems can be solved without allowing parents the option to take their children out of the failing schools they are forced to attend.
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One of the great mysteries of our time is why so many people who are either born rich or who gain great wealth in the media are so hostile to the values of American society and Western civilization. The most plausible explanation I have heard is that this stance enables them to… https://t.co/8706wIGjP2
It doesn't matter what rights you have under the Constitution of the United States, if the government can punish you for exercising those rights. And it doesn't matter what limits the Constitution puts on government officials' power, if they can exceed those limits without any… https://t.co/mFZJOS8Bmc
It is amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.
Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important.
Envy used to be just a human failing, but today it is a major industry. Politicians, journalists and academics are all part of that industry, which some call "social justice."
Virtually everybody is worse off than somebody else, if only in one dimension, so there are nearly… https://t.co/0gGliTxaZw
Regardless of what it is supposed to do, what the national debt-ceiling actually does is enable any administration to get all the political benefits of runaway spending for the benefit of their favorite constituencies – and then invite the opposition party to share the blame, by… https://t.co/velqNv6Cgi
It is a painful irony that people who are promoting the make-believe equality of “inclusion” and “diversity” in schools are attacking charter schools that are producing the real equality of educational achievement.