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.
Thomas Sowell
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.
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.
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 takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'
People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
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.
What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
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.
If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
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.
It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.
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.
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
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.
Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.
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.
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.
The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.
If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.
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.
Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?
The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.
Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America.
Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.
People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
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 old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his 'basic rights.'
Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?
One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.
There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
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.
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.
Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
Facts are not liberals' strong suit. Rhetoric is.
Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.
