Thomas Sowell

Neither "property" nor the value of property is a physical thing. Property is a set of defined options...It is that read more

Neither "property" nor the value of property is a physical thing. Property is a set of defined options...It is that set of options which has economic value...It is the options, and not the physical things, which are the "property" - economically as well as legally...But because the public tends to think of property as tangible, physical things, this opens the way politically for government confiscation of property by forcibly taking away options while leaving the physical objects untouched.

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

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

Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in read more

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.

...each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it read more

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

The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that read more

The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help.".