Quotes from Thomas Sowell

The idealism of the left is a very selfish idealism. In their war against 'the rich' and big business, they don't care how much collateral damage there is to workers who end up end up unemployed.

Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

The gift of clever phrasing may be a curse unless the phrases are put to the test of sound, practical application before being uttered.

Sin importar cuánto deseemos organizar todo de manera racional, sin desperdicios, ni cuán apasionada y cuidadosamente deseemos colocar todos los ladrillos de la estructura económica, sin grietas en la argamasa, esto continúa escapando a nuestras posibilidades.

It is a classic example of arguing against a caricature instead of confronting the argument actually made. While

When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves. More

Adherents of both the constrained and the unconstrained visions each see fascism as the logical extension of the adversary's vision.

the railroad and the steamship affected not only industry and commerce, but also the lives of millions of ordinary people.

In short, Europe and the world were on the brink of a catastrophic war because neither friend nor foe believed that Britain and France had national honor.

there were numerous black-owned businesses in Harlem—the majority of which were owned by blacks from the Caribbean, not blacks from the American South, who were the majority population of Harlem.174

but cheap transportation made all these things available to the masses.'°

In short, money with strings is worth less than money without strings—sometimes a lot less.

But the actual arguments advocated by Secretary Mellon had nothing to do with a "trickle-down theory." Mellon pointed out that, under the high income tax rates at the end of the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1921, vast sums of money had been put into tax shelters such as tax-exempt municipal bonds, instead of being invested in the private economy, where this money would create more output, incomes and jobs.[8

Discorde de alguém da direita e ele, provavelmente, vai pensar que você é estúpido, errado, tolo, um bobo. Discorde de alguém da esquerda e ele, provavelmente, vai pensar que você é egoísta, traidor da causa, insensível, possivelmente mau14

One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.

Necesitamos aprender de lo obvio, más que indagar en lo oculto. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

Los incentivos son relevantes porque la mayoría de las personas tienden a hacer más por su beneficio que por el beneficio de otros. Los incentivos hacen que ambas consideraciones coincidan. Una camarera nos sirve comida no porque tengamos hambre, sino porque su salario y propinas dependen de ello. Ante la ausencia de estos incentivos, el servicio en los restaurantes de la Unión Soviética era notoriamente malo.

The promotion of self-esteem in our schools has been so successful that people feel free to spout off about all sorts of things — and see no reason why their opinions should not be taken as seriously as the views of people who actually know what they are talking about.

A computer study of the frequency of the word "duty" in British and American books showed its frequency had shrunk to one-third of its frequency in earlier times.124 Shame is another of the concepts that seems to have faded, as shameless behavior has flourished, and has even been celebrated as "liberation" in some quarters.

Los economistas han entendido durante siglos que cuando los precios están altos, las personas tienden a comprar menos que cuando los precios están bajos. Sin embargo, incluso hoy, muchos no entienden las múltiples implicaciones de ese simple hecho.

Las empresas capitalistas compran insumos de otras que tienen menores costes que ellas para producir esos mismos insumos, y venden su propia producción al intermediario que mejor puede llevar a cabo su distribución. Sin embargo, una economía socialista puede prescindir de las ventajas de la especialización, y además por motivos muy racionales, debido a las muy diferentes circunstancias bajo las que operan.

De forma paradójica, es precisamente donde nadie está controlado que toda la economía automáticamente termina siendo coordinada por la fluctuación de precios, mientras que en las economías deliberadamente planificadas este mismo nivel de coordinación una y otra vez ha resultado difícil o imposible de alcanzar.

more than a third of Europe's land mass consists of islands and peninsulas, only 2 percent of Africa's land mass consists of islands and peninsulas.