Blake > Blake's Quotes

“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“The government is indeed an institution, but "the market" is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“What all these lofty and vague phrases boil down to is that the court can impose things that the voters don't want and the Constitution does not require, but which are in vogue in circles to which the court responds.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“Everyone may be called "comrade," but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“Clearly, only very unequal intellectual and moral standing could justify having equality imposed, whether the people want it or not, as Dworkin suggests, and only very unequal power would make it possible.”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

“A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence -- often the sole evidence offered -- of "inadequate" nongovernment institutions, whose "inability" to cope with problems "obviously" required state intervention. Government is depicted as acting not in response to its own political incentives and constraints but because it is compelled to do so by concern for the public interest: it "cannot keep its hands off" when so "much is at stake," when emergency "compels" it to supersede other decision making processes. Such a tableau simple ignores the possibility that there are political incentives for the production and distribution of "emergencies" to justify expansions of power as well as to use episodic emergencies as a reason for creating enduring government institutions.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts ... genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation ... the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality ...though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]”
― Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm

“Intellect is not wisdom.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
― Thomas Sowell

“If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.”
― Thomas Sowell