The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
More Quotes from Thomas Sowell:
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.Thomas Sowell
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
Thomas Sowell
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.
Thomas Sowell
For society as a whole, nothing comes as a 'right' to which we are 'entitled.' Even bare subsistence has to be producedand produced at a cost of heavy toil for much of human history. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.
Thomas Sowell
Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
Thomas Sowell
Cultures contain many cues and inducements to dissuade the individual from approaching ultimate limits, in much the same way that a special warning strip of land around the edge of a baseball field lets a player know that he is about to run into a concrete wall when he is preoccupied with catching the ball. The wider that strip of land and the more sensitive the player is to the changing composition of the ground under his feet as he pursues the ball, the more effective the warning. Romanticizing or lionizing as individualistic those people who disregard social cues and inducements increases the danger of head-on collisions with inherent social limits. Decrying various forms of social disapproval is in effect narrowing the warning strip.
Thomas Sowell
Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:
My values, our values, aren't about pointing fingers. They are about offering a helping hand.Kathleen Blanco
We didn't lose Vietnam. We quit Vietnam.
Alexander Haig
It's more about conception and touch and spirit and soul than whether my hardware was in place.
Pat Metheny