Thomas Sowell Quotes About Decisions

Quotes about: Decisions

• It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

  Thomas Sowell

  Business, Stupid, Government

  "Wake Up, Parents!". Column at Jewish World Review, www.jewishworldreview.com. August 18, 2000.

• The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Decision, Fatal Attraction

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.225, Hoover Press

• Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, People, Decision

• Hilary Clinton said you know, it takes a village to raise a child and somebody said it takes a village idiot to believe that … it is part of the whole thing of third parties wanting to make decisions for which they pay no price for when they’re wrong.

  Thomas Sowell

  Children, Party, Believe

• Has Obama ever grown even a potted plant, much less a business, a bank, a hospital or any of the numerous other institutions whose decisions he wants to control and override? But he can talk glibly about growing the economy. Arrogance is no substitute for experience. That is why the country is in the mess it is in now.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Decision, Arrogance

  "Thomas Sowell: Jobs speech insulted our intelligence" by Thomas Sowell, www.ocregister.com. September 13, 2011.

• Why the transfer of decisions from those with personal experience and a stake in the outcome to those with neither can be expected to lead to better decisions is a question seldom asked, much less answered.

  Thomas Sowell

  Decision, Liberty, Outcomes

• Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mistake, Decision, Vision

• Freedom... refer[s] to a social relationship among people-namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect.

  Thomas Sowell

  Freedom, People, Decision

• In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the: process: by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong-surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences.

  Thomas Sowell

  Party, People, Decision

  Thomas Sowell (1995). “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”, p.129, Basic Books

• Most problems, decisions, and performances are multidimensional, but somehow the results have to be reduced to a few key indicators which are to be institutionally rewarded or penalized... The need to reduce the indicators to a manageable few is based not only on the need to conserve the time (and sanity) of those who assign rewards and penalties, but also to provide those subject to these incentives with some objective indication of what their performance is expected to be and how it will be judged... key indicators can never tell the whole story.

  Thomas Sowell

  Keys, Decision, Needs

• Another way of verbally masking elite preemption of other people's decisions is to use the word 'ask'-as in 'We are just asking everyone to pay their fair share.' But of course governments do not ask, they: tell. The Internal Revenue Service does not 'ask' for contributions. It takes.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, People, Decision

• In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Years, Decision

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.24, ReadHowYouWant.com

• In the wake of the housing debacle in California, more people are buying less expensive homes, making bigger down payments, and staying away from 'creative' and risky financing. It is amazing how fast people learn when they are not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.

  Thomas Sowell

  Home, California, People

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.30, ReadHowYouWant.com

• The more adaptability exists for a given kind of decision, the less risky it is to make plans for the future, and therefore the more likely it is that more people will make more plans in such areas.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Decision, Kind

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.29, Basic Books

• Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society.

  Thomas Sowell

  Communication, Decision, Problem

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.26, Basic Books

• The great allure of government programs in general for many people is that these programs allow decisions to be made without having to worry about the constraints of prices, which confront people at every turn in a free market.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, People, Worry

• Informal relationships are not mere minor interstitial supplements to the major institutions of society. These informal relationships not only include important decision-making processes, such as the family, but also produce much of the background social capital without which the other major institutions of society could not function nearly as effectively as they do.

  Thomas Sowell

  Decision, Important, Social

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.30, Basic Books

• Because many of us make mistakes that can have bad consequences, some intellectuals believe that it is the role of government to intervene and make some of our decisions for us. From what galaxy government is going to hire creatures who do not make mistakes is a question they leave unanswered.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mistake, Believe, Government

• You need to be empathetic in your own personal life and we help our neighbors and our friends out who are struggling in our neighborhoods. But we don't make bad decisions based on empathy.

  Thomas Sowell

  Struggle, Empathy, Decision

  Source: www.foxnews.com

• If one writing contributed more than any other to the framework in which this work Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions developed, it would be an essay entitled 'The Use of Knowledge in Society,' published in the American Economic Review of September 1945, and written by F. A. Hayek . . In this plain and apparently simple essay was a deeply penetrating insight into the way societies function and malfunction, and clues as to why they are so often and so profoundly misunderstood.

  Thomas Sowell

  Writing, Simple, Decision

  "Knowledge and Decisions". Book by Thomas Sowell, 1980.

• Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results.

  Thomas Sowell

  Opportunity, Rights, Decision

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