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While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.


Thomas Sowell

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THOMAS SOWELL Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.
THOMAS SOWELL Freedom...refer[s] to a social relationship among people- namely, the absence of force as a prospect...
THOMAS SOWELL The celebration of unbounded individualism means, beyond some point, the acceptance of force- either...
THOMAS SOWELL Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtu...
THOMAS SOWELL Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
THOMAS SOWELL To include freedom in the very definition of democracy is to define a process not by its actual char...
THOMAS SOWELL To say that a farm boy knows how to milk a cow is to say that we can send him out to the barn with a...
THOMAS SOWELL It is precisely those things which belong to "the people" which have historically been despoiled- wi...
THOMAS SOWELL What is politically defined as economic "planning" is the forcible superseding of other people's pla...
THOMAS SOWELL Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of ...
THOMAS SOWELL As a rule of thumb, Congressional legislation that is bipartisan is usually twice as bad as legislat...
THOMAS SOWELL The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best
THOMAS SOWELL Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtu...
THOMAS SOWELL Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be ...
THOMAS SOWELL The staunchest conservatives advocate a range of changes which differ in specifics, rather than in n...
THOMAS SOWELL I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to...
THOMAS SOWELL One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causa...
THOMAS SOWELL It takes no more research than a trip to almost any public library or college to show the incredibly...
THOMAS SOWELL the so-called ‘Negro dialect’ is simply a variation on the ordinary Southern accent.
THOMAS SOWELL Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hen...
THOMAS SOWELL However much history may be invoked in support of these policies (affirmative action), no pol...
THOMAS SOWELL Reality does not go away when it is ignored.
THOMAS SOWELL