Someone once defined a social problem as a situation in which the real world differs from the theories of intellectuals. To the intelligentsia, it follows, as the night follows the day, that it is the real world that is wrong and which needs to change.

One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left

You do not need proof for what people want to believe

Too often the past has been twisted to fit the visions and agendas of the present

No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers

All statements are true, if you are free to redefine their terms

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 the time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances

The key fallacy of so called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available

As an economist, whenever I hear the word shortage I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually price controlAdd title

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good

What does ‘economic justice’ mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?

Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society

Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today’s half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again – and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric

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

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision

The vision of the left, full of envy and resentment, takes its worst toll on those at the bottom – whether black or white – who find in that paranoid vision an excuse for counterproductive and ultimately self-destructive attitudes and behavior

Those who want to “spread the wealth” almost invariably seek to concentrate the power. It happens too often, and in too many different countries around the world, to be a coincidence. Which is more dangerous, inequalities of wealth or concentrations of power?

The purpose of education is to give the student the intellectual tools to analyze, whether verbally or numerically, and to reach conclusions based on logic and evidence

Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected

How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society

One of the big differences between Democrats and Republicans is that we at least know what the Democrats stand for, whether we agree with it or not. But, for Republicans, we have to guess

The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against.

Most people who read “The Communist Manifesto” probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives, and who nevertheless spoke boldly in the name of “the workers”. Thomas Sowell

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

The left takes its vision seriously – more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.

An independent judiciary does not mean judges independent of the Constitution from which they derive their power or independent of the laws that they are sworn to uphold

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all

Whether Barack Obama is simply incompetent as president or has some hidden agenda to undermine this country, at home and abroad, he has nearly everything he needs to ruin America, including a fool for a vice president

Love is a four-letter word, but you don’t hear in nearly as often as you hear some other four-letter words. It may be a sign of our times that everyone talks openly about sex, but we seem to be embarrassed to talk about love

Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned – never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government

What is called an educated person is often someone who has had a dangerously superficial exposure to a wide spectrum of subject

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”.

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help

A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.9.

Someone once said that many bad policies are just good policies that have been carried too far. For example, we have taken tolerance to such an extreme that we tolerate the immigration into our country of millions of intolerant people who hate millions of Americans who are already here

Government central planning means over-riding other people’s plans

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more

Justice at all costs’ is not justice

The real minimum wage is zero

Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market – contrary to rhetoric

Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side.

How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?

Subsidies are a shell game, not a net addition to national wealth

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance

Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism

A passionate commitment to social justice is no substitute for knowing what the hell you’re talking about.

Envy is always referred to by its political alias, ’social justice

Capitalism is not an ‘ism.’ It is closer to being the opposite of an ‘ism,’ because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to

The welfare state has always been judged by its good intentions, rather than its bad results

Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice

Don’t you get tired of seeing so many “non-conformists” with the same non-conformist look?

Tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom.

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves

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.

People who think that they are being exploited should ask themselves whether they would be missed if they left, or whether people would say: Good riddance?

Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from

What is called ‘capitalism’ might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it

Rhetoric is no substitute for reality

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination

Reality is not optional

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric

There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims

Reality does not go away when it is ignored

The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is

The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity

We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it

There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse

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

It is amazing how many people act as if the right to free speech includes the right to be free of criticism for what you say – which means that other people should not have the same right to free speech that they claim for themselve

History is the memory of a nation

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson’s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant ‘whiz kids’ tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results

In an age of artificial intelligence, too many of our schools and colleges are producing artificial stupidity

The grand delusion of contemporary liberals is that they have both the right and the ability to move their fellow creatures around like blocks of wood – and that the end results will be no different than if people had voluntarily chosen the same action

One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain

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

American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected

Although the big word on the left is ‘compassion,’ the big agenda on the left is dependency

A friend from India told me that a countryman of his said: “I want to go to America. I want to see a country where poor people are fat

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young

Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data

If you believe in equal rights, then what do “women’s rights,” “gay rights,” etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today

To say that being non-judgmental is better than being judgmental is itself a judgment, and therefore a violation of principle

Stupid people can cause problems, but it usually takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe

Lunches don’t get free just because you don’t see the prices on the menu. And economists don’t get popular by reminding people of that

Think about it: What the busybodies are saying is that third parties like themselves – who are paying nothing to anybody – should be determining how much somebody else should be paying those who work for them

Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas

It is bad enough that so many people believe things without any evidence. What is worse is that some people have no conception of evidence and regard facts as just someone else’s opinion

Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence

Before the Iraq war I was quite disturbed by some of the neoconservatives, who were saying things like, “What is the point of being a superpower if you can’t do such-and-such, take on these responsibilities?” The point of being a superpower is that people will leave you alon

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it

When a highly successful leader retires after a long career, it is very unlikely that his successor will be of comparable caliber. Anyone of similar ability and drive would have gone somewhere else, instead of waiting in the wings for years for a chance to show his own leadership

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact

If sanity ever returns to our society and we stop taking pretentious elites seriously, one of the signs will be that the public will force the removal of those ugly pieces of twisted metal that are called ‘art’ in front of government buildings

In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media.

There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs

You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new ‘solution’ to society’s ‘problem

If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us

Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole

The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.

Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers

Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius

It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it “greed” to want to keep what you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes.

Neither the depth of despondency nor the height of euphoria tells you how long either will last

Doing the right thing is fun. If nothing else, it surprises people

Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom

Too many people – some of them judges – seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight

Women can say anything they want to men, or blacks to whites, with impunity. But strong words in the other direction can bring down on students the wrath of the campus thought police – as well as punishments that can extend to suspension or expulsion

If a word means everything, then in means nothing

It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic

The only thing better than “hands-on” experience is hands-off experience – enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone

There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary

Relevance is not something you can predict. It is something you discover after the fact

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization – including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility, and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain – without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large

The difference between a policy and a crusade is that a policy is judged by its results, while a crusade is judged by how good it makes its crusaders feel

The big problem in the long process of dumbing down the schools is that you can reach a point of no return. How are parents who never received a decent education themselves to recognize that their children are not getting a decent education?

Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.

grThe great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s own behavior

Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination

Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals

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

Everyone may be called “comrade,” but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.

Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans – anything except reason

If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live

We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems – of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.

One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience

People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly

No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

What the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others

What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?

The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial principle will become harmful if carried far enough

The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn’t work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good.

The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling

One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence

There are 3 questions that would destroy most of the arguments of the Left. The first is – compared to what? The second is – at what cost? And the third is – what hard evidence do you have?

Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who “speak truth to power” but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.

What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best

Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism

Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late

Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It’s purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature

In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities

Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department

Too much of what is called ‘education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings

The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation

Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty

It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.

The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

People who pride themselves on their “complexity” and deride others for being “simplistic” should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth

It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think

ANYONE who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them – instead of answering their arguments

The word ‘racism’ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything – and demanding evidence makes you a ‘racist

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism

People who talk incessantly about “change” are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people

It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

In the long run, the greatest weapon of mass destruction is stupidity

Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare

Intellect is not wisdom

Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics

It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites

I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything

When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination

One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again

Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don’t know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields

Social Engineering – The art of replacing what works with what sounds good

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support – kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists

Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance