Quotes from Thomas Sowell

The over-riding quest for re-election is at the heart of the corruption of public officials who betray the public trust in order to get the money needed to pay for their political campaigns. It is hard to see how that corruption can be ended, except by ending re-elections with a limit of one term and a ban on running for another office for several years.

Among the many preconceptions that cannot be subjected to any empirical test because they are so subjective is the notion that third-party observers know better what is good for people than those people know themselves.

Dado que las elecciones democráticas se realizan siempre a corto plazo, los políticos tienen todos los incentivos para extraer tanta riqueza como les sea posible del capital fijo bajo su jurisdicción, ya sea a través de impuestos, de la imposición de cargas sobre la propiedad o de la expropiación. Solamente la conciencia del público sobre las consecuencias a largo plazo puede limitar esta forma de explotación.

1950, Britain's share was down to 3 percent and that of the United States was 82 percent.

el éxito de los políticos no depende de que aprendan sus lecciones sobre historia o política, sino que depende mucho más de que tengan la capacidad de actuar en función de lo que es ampliamente creído por el público y los medios, lo que puede incluir teorías conspirativas o la creencia de que los precios más altos se deben al engaño o a la avaricia.

the passing decades have taught me that political elites and cultural elites are doing far more damage than the market elites could ever get away with doing.

In understanding Black Africa, geography is more important than history. Fernand Braudel

The world's first university chair in engineering was founded in Glasgow in 1840.2'x

slavery was a worldwide institution, entrenched on every inhabited continent, subjugating people of every color, language, and religion

a desert more vast than the continental United States

Las políticas económicas necesitan ser analizadas según los incentivos que crean, y no según las esperanzas que las inspiraron.

WW2 films on the history channel show the desperate courage of the men and women who fought the battles. What a painful contrast with the cheap cowardice of the politicians who got them into such a mess in the first place.

there were things I thought needed saying and I knew that other people were reluctant to say them

Julius Caesar's victories in Gaul were in significant part a result of the disunity of the Celts there, and of his ability to divide and conquer, both politically and militarily.269

internal disunity made Ireland vulnerable to conquest by a united Britain.

En general, el mercado es más listo que el más espabilado de sus participantes individuales. ROBERT L. BARTLEY

At age thirty, Engels accepted his father's offer to work in the family business in Manchester. This became the source of Engels' livelihood —and much of Marx's. The young Engels called it forced labor — a painfully ironic term in view of what the phrase was to come to mean in twentieth-century Communist societies. Engels complained, for example, that I've now got to be at the office no later than 10 in the morning.

Those who disdain wealth as a worthy goal for an individual or a society seem not to realize that wealth is the only thing that can prevent poverty.

as Will Rogers said long ago, "When you ain't nothing else, you can claim to be an artist—

Wrongs abound in times and places around the world - inflicted on, and perpetrated by, people of virtually every race, creed and color. But what can any society today hope to gain by having newborn babies in that society enter the world as heirs to prepackaged grievances against other babies born into that same society on the same day.

If we ever allow morality or law to become just a question of whose ox is gored, then we will have taken a fatal step toward national suicide. We can survive lapses into hypocrisy, but we cannot survive making hypocrisy a ruling principle.

In Virginia, the printing press was deliberately restricted by the powers that be, to keep reading matter from the masses, while the aristocracy often had impressive libraries in their homes.396

Intellect—even intellect that reaches the level of genius—is not the same as wisdom.

expedition returned in triumph to Rome with captured British slaves marching behind them in the procession.12