What 'eminent domain' laws mean in practice is that politicians have a right to seize your property and turn it over to someone else, in order to gain campaign contributions and win votes. Thomas Sowell More Quotes by Thomas Sowell More Quotes From Thomas Sowell Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me. Thomas Sowell black white people The whole idea of equal justice under law is completely incompatible with the idea of judges deciding cases according to "empathy". Thomas Sowell law justice ideas People who believe in 'universal health care' show remarkably little interest - usually none - in finding out what that phrase turns out to mean in practice, in those countries where it already exists, such as Britain, Sweden or Canada. For one thing, 'universal health care' in these countries means months of waiting for surgery that Americans get in a matter of weeks or even days. Thomas Sowell mean believe country There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary. Thomas Sowell wasting-time waste bigger Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options Thomas Sowell asks doe want The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to “help.” Thomas Sowell black government war To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits. Thomas Sowell dollars mean people The gun-control crusade today is like the Prohibition crusade 100 years ago. It is a shared zealotry that binds the self-righteous know-it-alls in a warm fellowship of those who see themselves as fighting on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. It is a lofty role that they are not about to give up for anything so mundane as facts - or even the lives of other people. Thomas Sowell giving-up fighting angel Media bias in editorials and columns is one thing. Media fraud in reporting 'facts' in news stories is something else. ...The issue is not what various journalists or news organizations' editorial views are. The issue is the transformation of news reporting into ideological spin, along with self-serving taboos and outright fraud. Thomas Sowell news-stories self views Apparently almost anyone can do a better job of educating children than our so-called 'educators' in the public schools. Children who are home-schooled by their parents also score higher on tests than children educated in the public schools. ... Successful education shows what is possible, whether in charter schools, private schools, military schools or home-schooling. The challenge is to provide more escape hatches from failing public schools, not only to help those students who escape, but also to force these institutions to get their act together before losing more students and jobs. Thomas Sowell military jobs children So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers' unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do. Thomas Sowell teacher jobs country When all is said and done, the Constitution of the United States is a set of words on a piece of paper. The only way that the Constitution can protect us is if we protect the Constitution. Thomas Sowell united-states pieces done A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas. Thomas Sowell monopoly moral ideas There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs. Thomas Sowell trade-offs conservative trade Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved. Thomas Sowell loss jobs mean 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 empathy decision struggle Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets. Thomas Sowell requirements produce business You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down. Thomas Sowell sheer sense-of-humor political The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite. Thomas Sowell technology opposites mean The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them. Thomas Sowell mass-shootings gun real
