THOMAS SOWELL

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

"The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions."

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

"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."

"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."

"The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves."

"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 only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously."

"Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young."

"People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid."

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good."

"As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill."

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

"If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates."

"As an entrepreneur in India put it: 'Indians have learned from painful experience that the state does not work on behalf of the people. More often than not, it works on behalf of itself."

"It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature."