My Spare Brain: MASTERMIND: Thomas Sowell

About My Spare Brain

I spend much time searching for things - books, films, stories, quotes, songs, jokes, pictures, poems, prayers, anything really - that helps me see and think differently. Some of the ideas I've come across are presented in my book, See New Now. Others are fleshed out in my other blog. The rest are stored here for use in future books, articles, blog posts, speeches, and workshops. There is little rhyme or reason for what I post here. I do this to encourage visitors to come here as treasure hunters looking for new ways of seeing and thinking vs. researchers looking for new or better answers to questions they already know how to ask.

PLEASE VISIT MY OTHER BLOG

My other blog is Conversation Kindling. Its purpose is to pass along stories, metaphors, quotes, songs, humor, etc. in hopes they'll be used to spark authentic and rewarding conversations about working and living fruitfully. There are at least three things you can gain by getting involved in these conversations. First, you can discover new and important things about yourself through the process of thinking out loud. Second, you can deepen your relationships with others who join you by swapping thoughts, feelings, and stories with them. Finally, you'll learn that robust dialogue centered on stories and experiences is the best way to build trust, create new knowledge, and generate innovative answers to the questions that both life and work ask.

July 13, 2010

MASTERMIND: Thomas Sowell

"Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: 1) Compared to what? 2) At what cost? and 3) What are the hard facts?" - Thomas Sowell

"One of the great meaningless phrases of our times is: 'I take full responsibility.' This does not mean that you are prepared to pay the consequences for what you have done. On the contrary, this statement is usually offered instead of taking the consequences." - Thomas Sowell

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good." - Thomas Sowell

"No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results." - Thomas Sowell

"Not only does the passage of time produce knowledge, it also produces ignorance. As the passage of time removes people with first-hand knowledge of an earlier era, they are replaced by people ignorant of those times and therefore easy targets for demagogues." - Thomas Sowell

"Nearly two hundred years ago, the great economist David Ricardo said: 'I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.'" - Thomas Sowell

"Some people are so busy being clever that they don't have time enough to be wise." - Thomas Sowell

"Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty." - Thomas Sowell

"Perhaps the scariest aspect of our times is how many people think in talking points, rather than in terms of real world consequences." - Thomas Sowell

"In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities." - 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." - Thomas Sowell

"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." - 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 sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." - Thomas Sowell

"There was once a time when parents pointed out bums on the streets and told their children that this was what could happen to you if you didn't bother to learn the things you needed to know, and do the things you needed to do, to make it in life. Today, children are taught to be 'non-judgmental' and the media keep saying that these drug-ridden derelicts are 'people just like us' who happened to fall on hard times." - Thomas Sowell

"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." - Thomas Sowell

"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." - Thomas Sowell

"If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win." - Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals & Society: Part One - Introduction