Thomas Sowell Quotes - Page 24

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• At least half of the popular fallacies about economics come from assuming that economic activity is a zero-sum game, in which what is gained by someone is lost by someone else. But transactions would not continue unless both sides gained, whether in international trade, employment, or renting an apartment.

  Thomas Sowell

  Zero, Games, Employment

  "Random Thoughts" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. June 13, 2006.

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• Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a good thing to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.

  Thomas Sowell

  Social Values, Safety, Diversity

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.110, Basic Books

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• Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.

  Thomas Sowell

  Real, People, Swim

  "A Political "Solution": Part II" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 23, 2008.

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• 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

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• Much of the world today, including the United States, is still living in the social, cultural, and political aftermath of Britain's cultural achievements, its industrial revolution, its government of checks and balances, and its conquests around the world.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, History, Achievement

  Thomas Sowell (2008). “Conquests And Cultures: An International History”, p.67, Basic Books

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• While President Barack Obama has, in one sense, tipped his hand by saying that he wants judges with "empathy" for certain groups, he has in a more fundamental sense concealed the real goal - getting judges who will ratify an ever-expanding scope of the power of the federal government and an ever-declining restraint by the Constitution of the United States. This is consistent with everything else that Obama has done in office and is consistent with his decades-long track record of alliances with people who reject the fundamentals of American society.

  Thomas Sowell

  Real, Government, Hands

  "'Empathy' Versus Law: Part III" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. May 6, 2009.

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• Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along.

  Thomas Sowell

  Powerful, Political, Advice

  Thomas Sowell (2007). “A Conflict of Visions: Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles”, p.8, Basic Books

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• Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

  Thomas Sowell

  Thinking, Important, Information

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.80, Basic Books

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• You can always create a fraction by putting one variable upstairs and another variable downstairs, but that soes not establish any causal relationship between them, nor does the resulting quotient have any necessary relationship to anything in the real world.

  Thomas Sowell

  Real, Science, Doe

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• When a highly successful leader retires after a long career, it is very unlikely that his successor will be of comparable caliber. Anyone of similar ability and drive would have gone somewhere else, instead of waiting in the wings for years for a chance to show his own leadership.

  Thomas Sowell

  Leadership, Successful, Years

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• Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

  Thomas Sowell

  Thinking, Self, Opposites

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• Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default. ... The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Should Have, Careers

  "Bailout Politics" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 30, 2008.

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• As taxpayers, we have quietly accepted the fact that our taxes will be spent to pay big bucks for all sorts of ugly, twisted metal to be displayed in front of or inside government buildings, in the name of 'art' that was obviously never meant to give the public any enjoyment and often represented a thumbing of the artist's nose at the public.

  Thomas Sowell

  Art, Government, Names

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• Since terrorists are pouring into Iraq in response to calls from international terrorist networks, the number of those who are killed is especially important, for these are people who will no longer be around to launch more attacks on American soil. Iraq has become a magnet for enemies of the United States, a place where they can be killed wholesale, thousands of miles away.

  Thomas Sowell

  Iraq, Numbers, People

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• Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden.

  Thomas Sowell

  Garden, Eden, Late

  Thomas Sowell (2006). “Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Kids, Defense

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.98, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The demands of unbounded individualism need to be weighed in the light of inherent social constraints which can only change their form but cannot be eliminated without eliminating civilization.

  Thomas Sowell

  Light, Civilization, Society

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.107, Basic Books

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• We never really know and the very fact that there are such words in the language as disappointment, regret, etc., is testimony to the pervasiveness and persistence of this feature of the human condition.

  Thomas Sowell

  Disappointment, Regret, Persistence

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.85, Basic Books

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• Neither your life nor my life, nor the future of this country, will be affected in the slightest by whether Linda Tripp is naughty or nice. But if any president is able to commit crimes with impunity by using the vast powers and perquisites of his office to cover up, then we will have a danger of corruption and abuse of power that can only grow with the passing years and generations.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Nice, Naughty

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• Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later - if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back.

  Thomas Sowell

  Pay, Firsts, Coming Back

  Thomas Sowell (2010). “Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy”, p.589, Basic Books

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• After the risky mortgage-lending practices fostered by government intervention led to massive defaults and foreclosures that caused financial institutions to collapse or be bailed out, Congressman Frank changed his tune completely.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Practice, Tunes

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.21, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

  Thomas Sowell

  Loss, Income, Benefits

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• When Congress gets through investigating Attorney General Janet Reno, will her agency become known as the Obstruction of Justice Department? The civil rights movement was one of the great moral crusades in the first half of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, in more recent times it has become all too much like those it opposed, demanding racial double standards and even condoning verbal and violent attacks against members of other races.

  Thomas Sowell

  Agency, Rights, Race

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• 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

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• The stricter standards and independent, often conclusive, evidence in the physical sciences cannot be generalized to intellectual activity as a whole, even though the aura of scientific processes and results is often appropriated by other intellectuals.

  Thomas Sowell

  Independent, Intellectual, Auras

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.9, Basic Books

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