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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
913cd6e	The virtually unanimous support of bilingualism among Hispanic activists, "leaders" and "spokesmen"--in contrast to Hispanic parents--is understandable only in terms of the self-interest of those activists, "leaders" and "spokesmen," who benefit from the preservation of a separate ethnic enclave, preferably alienated from the larger society."			Thomas Sowell
7a8f6b7	languages as Asians, who outnumber them nearly four to one.121 Linguistic diversity is not only a sign of cultural isolation and fragmentation, it contributes to the barriers			Thomas Sowell
08ed823	The United States as a whole is larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion.			Thomas Sowell
274786c	But his was an understandable mistake, given how little attention is paid to accuracy in history and how often history is used as just a propaganda tool in current controversies.			Thomas Sowell
349e1d9	The traditional fixed-rate 30-year mortgages, which were once a majority of all mortgages, were no longer a majority during the housing boom, as ARMs and other "creative" ways of financing the purchase of a home grew rapidly to cope with soaring housing prices. Such innovative mortgages quickly went from being rare to becoming common, especially in places with very high housing costs."			Thomas Sowell
92289f5	A society in which such decisions can only be made by males has thrown away half of its knowledge, talents, and insights.			Thomas Sowell
a12280f	Including the differential mortgage loan approval rates between Asian Americans and whites shows that the same methods to conclude that that blacks are discriminated against in mortgage lending would also lead to the conclusion that whites are discriminated against in favor of Asian Americans, reducing this whole procedure to absurdity, since no one believes that banks are discriminating against whites..."[W]hen loan approval rates are not ..			Thomas Sowell
0667b64	Income tax rules also made borrowing against a home's equity attractive. Because mortgage interest payments can be deducted for income tax purposes, the interest paid on home equity loans could also be deducted, although interest on credit card debt or other debt was not deductible. Therefore it often paid anyone with any other kind of debt to pay off that debt with a home equity loan, whose interest would be deductible for income tax purpo..			Thomas Sowell
982b3e5	millions of people died in the war "to make the world safe for democracy"--a war that led to autocratic dynasties being replaced by totalitarian dictatorships that slaughtered far more of their own people than the dynasties had?"			Thomas Sowell
1c3b207	Evidence is fact that discriminates between one theory and another. Facts do not ,,speak for themselves." they speak for or against competing theories. Theories can be devastated by facts but they can never be proven correct by facts. What empirical verification can do is to reveal which of the competing theories currently being considered is more consistent with that which is known factually. Some other theory may come along tomorrow that ..			Thomas Sowell
089a018	People who have already been out in the real world, practicing for years whatever their particular specialty might be, have some basis for determining which things are relevant enough to go into a curriculum to teach those who follow. The idea that students can determine relevance in advance is one of the many counterproductive notions to come out of the 1960s.			Thomas Sowell
7313fbd	The next time you see a bum leaving drug needles in a park where children play or urinating in the street, you are seeing your tax dollars at work and the end result of the vision of the anointed.			Thomas Sowell
bb1c78d	Moreover, even in the absence of accumulating personal experience, it was difficult to believe that soaring murder statistics reflected simply better record keeping, since it had always been hard to ignore a dead body.			Thomas Sowell
48d059a	Japan, newly emerging on the world scene in the late nineteenth century, sought its science and engineering in Scotland.			Thomas Sowell
ce70536	opportunity alone is not sufficient for economic or other accomplishments.			Thomas Sowell
d3a92b0	As George J. Stigler said of some of his fellow Nobel Laureates, they "issue stern ultimata to the public on almost a monthly basis, and sometimes on no other basis."			Thomas Sowell
47af0b9	The ending of the slave trade was one of many European policies imposed upon Africa by the conquerors.			Thomas Sowell
bc49778	The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from 'society,' rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by 'society.			Thomas Sowell
deb872c	In short, some of the least qualified students, taught by the least qualified professors in the lowest quality courses supply most American public school teachers.			Thomas Sowell
68afdba	Among the precepts that Andrew Jackson's mother taught him were never to sue anybody for slander or for assault and battery: "Always settle them cases yourself."			Thomas Sowell
3164d72	Cultural differences are real, and cannot be talked away by using pejorative terms such as "stereotypes" or "racism." --			Thomas Sowell
58ee9e3	The crucial question is not whether evils exist but whether the evils of the past or present are automatically the cause of major economic, educational and other social disparities today. The bedrock assumption underlying many political or ideological crusades is that socioeconomic disparities are automatically somebody's fault, so that our choices are either to blame society or to 'blame the victim.' Yet whose fault are demographic differe..			Thomas Sowell
5ebf643	Nothing is more complex than avoiding the obvious		politics explanations	Thomas Sowell
0114668	That some leader dangerous to the basic institutions of American society would arise, Lincoln thought inevitable. Safeguarding these institutions would require a public sufficiently united, sufficiently attached to freedom, and sufficiently wise, "to successfully frustrate his designs." Today it would also require a public sufficiently resistant to incessant criticisms and condemnations of their society for failing to achieve cosmic justice..		social-justice	Thomas Sowell
66f6618	Engels said: "what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed."			Thomas Sowell
ff553db	In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called "social justice" might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society."			Thomas Sowell
7e5dba4	Just as price fluctuations allocate scarce resources which have alternative uses, price controls which limit those fluctuations reduce the incentives for individuals to limit their own use of scarce resources desired by others.			Thomas Sowell
e4b4a1a	Piketty's crucial misstep is verbally converting a fluid process over time into a rigid structure, with a more or less permanent top one percent living isolated from the rest of society that is supposedly subjected to their control or influence. It is a vision divorced from demonstrable facts, however consonant it may be with prevailing preconceptions.			Thomas Sowell
5bf0e55	In short, rent control reduces the rate of housing turnover.			Thomas Sowell
f71402e	The intelligentsia in the media can decide what to emphasize, what to downplay and what to ignore entirely when it comes to race. These may be individual choices, rather than a conspiracy, but individual choices growing out of a common vision of the world can produce results all too similar to what is produced by centralized censorship or propaganda.			Thomas Sowell
37563b4	Outside the world of education, few would be confident, or even comfortable, claiming that it is a lack of self-esteem which leads to felonies or its presence which leads to Nobel Prizes. Yet American schools are permeated with the idea that selfesteem precedes performance, rather than vice-versa. The very idea that self-esteem is something earned, rather than being a pre-packaged handout from the school system, seems not to occur to many e..			Thomas Sowell
258e49d	Geography is not egalitarian.		justice	Thomas Sowell
9be0db8	More to the point, if he did cancel the tour in order to fight that tax, would we regard him as a rational man of high principle or as a doctrinaire, a moral exhibitionist, or an egomaniac			Thomas Sowell
8c30852	The remarkable reversal of public attitudes toward the Japanese over the years -- especially in Australia, Peru and the United States -- suggests that behavior and performance are more effective ways of changing other people's minds than moral crusades or emotional denunciations.		migrants	Thomas Sowell
0c5fb5d	At various times and places, particular individuals have argued that existing tax rates are so high that the government could collect more tax revenues if it lowered those tax rates, because the changed incentives would lead to more economic activity, resulting in more tax revenues out of rising incomes, even though the tax rate was lowered.			Thomas Sowell
4a76bc9	It is a classic example of arguing against a caricature instead of confronting the argument actually made. While			Thomas Sowell
de758ab	In short, even though some individual slaveowners grew rich and some family fortunes were founded on the exploitation of slaves, that is very different from saying that the whole society, or even its non-slave population as a whole, was more economically advanced than it would have been in the absence of slavery. What this means is that, whether employed as domestic servants or producing crops or other goods, millions suffered exploitation ..			Thomas Sowell
85ef861	This was possible only because the anti-slavery movement coincided with an era in which Western power and hegemony were at their zenith, so that it was essentially European imperialism which ended slavery. This idea might seem shocking, not because it does not fit the facts, but because it does not fit the prevailing vision of our time.			Thomas Sowell
72e7382	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"			Thomas Sowell
6db336e	What actually followed the cuts in tax rates in the 1920s were rising output, rising employment to produce that output, rising incomes as a result and rising tax revenues for the government because of the rising incomes, even though the tax rates had been lowered.			Thomas Sowell
34d614d	Such are the ways of politics, where the crusade of the hour often blocks out everything else, at least until another crusade comes along and takes over the same monopoly of our minds.			Thomas Sowell
f15af64	A 1972 study showed that the amount of pollution per mile traveled by horse was a hundred times the amount of pollution per mile traveled by automobile.27 Since the cars produced in later years have had reduced pollution levels, the disparity today would be even greater. It should also be noted that the replacement of horses by automobiles made it possible to "restore more than 80 million acres of forestlands that had once been cleared for ..			Thomas Sowell
c5c5f7c	Galling as it may be to be helpless to redress the crying injustices of the past, symbolic expiation in the present can only create new injustices among the living and new problems for the future, when newborn babies enter the world with pre-packaged grievances against other babies born the same day. Both have their future jeopardized, not only by their internal strife but also by the increased vulnerability of disunited society to external..			Thomas Sowell
af2a552	would be hard to think of a more monocultural, insular and self-complacent nation than Japan--and vet the Japanese are among the leading participants in the international economy, in international scientific and technological developments, as well as in international travel and tourism. This is not a defense of insularity or of the Japanese, It is simply a piece of empirical evidence to highlight the non sequitur of the claim that internati..			Thomas Sowell

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