Thomas Sowell

Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into read more

Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along.

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about read more

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

The anointed don't like to talk about painful trade-offs. They like to talk about happy "solutions" that get rid of read more

The anointed don't like to talk about painful trade-offs. They like to talk about happy "solutions" that get rid of the whole problem- at least in their imagination.

With various people complaining about "price gouging... economist Walter Williams has coined a new term: "Tax gouging." But government is read more

With various people complaining about "price gouging... economist Walter Williams has coined a new term: "Tax gouging." But government is never accused of either "greed" or "gouging" — not even when they bulldoze people's homes in order to turn the land over to businesses that will pay more taxes.

Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural read more

Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.