Sowell Man Friday
October 28, 2011 Leave a comment
Here are just a few insightful quotes from Thomas Sowell’s new book, The Thomas Sowell Reader. I highly recommend this down to earth book by Thomas Sowell, economist. These quotes are to be found in the chapter Random Thoughts. As you will see, the quotes are apropos for today’s political scene and the profligate Left.
“Many of those people in the so-called “helping professions” are helping people to be irresponsible and dependent on others.”
“Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.”
“People who cannot be bothered to learn both sides of the issues should not bother to vote.”
“”Funding” is one of the big phony words of our times – used by people too squeamish to say “money” but not too proud to take it, usually from the taxpayers.”
“Envy plus rhetoric equals “social justice.”
“The national debt is the ghost of Christmas past.”
“Historians of the future will have hard time figuring out how so many organized groups of strident jackasses succeeded in leading us around by the nose and morally intimidating the majority into silence.”
“Those who want to take our money and gain power over us have discovered the magic formula: get us envious or angry at others and we will surrender, in installments, not only our money but our freedom. The most successful dictators of the 20th century – Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao – all used this formula, and now class warfare politicians are doing the same.”
“No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.”
“Too often what are called “educated” people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.”
“Some ideas sound so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas sound so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operations of the free market are among the second kind.”
“Much of what are called “social problems” consists of the fact that intellectuals have theories that do not fit the real world. From this they concluded that it is the real world which is wrong and needs changing.”
“Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all – inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable.”
“The people I feel sorry for are those who do 90 percent of what it takes to succeed.”
“Have you ever heard a single hard fact to back up all the sweeping claims for the benefits of “diversity”?
“A careful definition of words would destroy half the agenda of the political left and the scrutinizing evidence would destroy the other half.”
Cindy Wity 