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