Random Thoughts. Thomas Sowell.

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The following is from Thomas Sowell. Barbarians inside the Gates. pp. 245 - 268

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RANDOM THOUGHTS

If truth-in-labeling laws applied to panhandlers, then a lot of guys who carry signs saying "hungry" would have to change that to "thirsty."

The one thing that no policy will ever change is the past.

People who are trying to prove something usually don't prove anything, except what jerks they are.

Politics is the art of finding clever reasons for doing dumb things.

For years after the end of World War II, there were rumors that Hitler was still alive and in hiding somewhere. If so, now is the time for him to come on out. He can say "mistakes were made," express remorse and do his 200 hours of community service. Then he can sell his story to Oliver Stone to make a movie showing how the war was all the fault of Churchill and Roosevelt.

Liberals have never understood the significance of that great line from On the Waterfront, where Marlon Brando says: "I coulda been a contender!" Nothing you can give anybody is a substitute for letting him achieve on his own.

You can't stop people from saying bad things about you. All you can do is make them liars.

People who think that they are too good for their jobs are usually not good enough.

The problems growing out of short cuts and abbreviations have probably wasted far more time than these short cuts and abbreviations will ever save.

Some people say that I am overweight. But, after looking at the height and weight charts, I prefer to say that I am six inches too short.

There is no greater indictment of judges than the fact that honest men are afraid to go into court, while criminals swagger out through its revolving doors.

Many people need more help than they deserve. That's why there are families.

We pay our public officials too much for what they are and too little for what we want them to be.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

The public can get the bums off the streets faster than all the policemen in the country, just by not giving them money. Everybody doesn't have to stop, just enough to make the racket no longer worth it.

It always amazes me how many people there are who never seem to understand that what they have done has contributed to the consequences that followed.

California students in Monroe High School and Cleveland High School were surprised to learn that their schools were named for presidents. One girl at Cleveland H.S. said: "I thought it was named for that city in Canada."

It is painful to watch how inconsiderate so many people are of the slow-moving elderly. People out walking with them all but pull them along, even when it is obvious that they cannot go any faster. What is the point of pressuring or embarrassing someone like that?

We are among the biggest fools in history if we keep on paying people to make us hate each other. Whether it is called by pretty names like "multiculturalism," "diversity" or "gender awareness," that is what it all boils down to.

"Funding" is one of the big phony words of our times—used by people too squeamish to say "money" but not too proud to take it, usually from the taxpayers.

It has been said that armed civilians kill more criminals than the police do. If so, that is the strongest argument against gun control. At least those particular criminals will never walk the streets again, as they are likely to do if they go into the revolving door of our legal system.

Most of the Democrats who have run for President in the past 25 years—and all who have run successfully—have camouflaged their liberalism. Yet exposing the fraud leads to media charges of "negative" campaigning.

It is not necessarily a bad thing for young people to become disillusioned with their idols, if their own development has reached the point where they no longer need idols. Disillusionment is an inoculation against future gullibility.

It is hard to trust very good-looking women. You just know that they have been getting away with murder all their lives.

One of the miracles of faith is the liberals' belief that criminals will stop being armed if we ban guns. We have already banned crime and that doesn't stop them from committing it.

A quote to remember: "You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right." Lyndon Johnson said that—and much of his legislation painfully illustrated the difference between good intentions and good results.

I know that many people have no respect at all for Bill Clinton. Still, I was surprised to see an advertisement for toilet paper with his picture printed on each sheet.

Those who want to be "politically correct" must stay on their toes because new terms are being coined all the time. You may know that waiters and waitresses should be referred to as "wait persons" or "servers," but did you know that pets must now be referred to as "animal companions" and prostitutes as "sex workers"?

There must be a hundred people who know what needs to be done for every one who is prepared to do it.

There seem to be many "modern" parents who think that raising children is something you can do in your spare time, letting nursery schools and the like carry the load when the parents are busy with "important" things.

We are living in an era when sanity is controversial and insanity is just another viewpoint—and degeneracy only another lifestyle.

It is important that young children be able to rely on their parents completely—and equally important that grown children not be able to.

Have you ever seen some painting, writing, or clothing that you thought looked awful? Some music that you thought sounded terrible? You are free to say so only when these are products of Western civilization. Say that about something from some other culture and you are considered a terrible person, if not a racist.

With so many people—young people especially—the problem is not that they cannot figure out complicated things. The problem is that they will not take the trouble to do simple things and to do them right.

Never try to discuss important business with any organization during lunch time, when the regular staff are eating and the substitutes are on duty.

I can understand that some people like to drive slowly. What I cannot understand is why they get in the fast lane to do it.

If the Democrats came up with a plan for all Americans to jump off a thousand-foot cliff tomorrow, some Republicans would come up with an "alternative" plan in which we would all jump off a 500-foot cliff next week.

I was pained when I first read Joseph Schumpeter's statement, "You cannot carry people up the ladder." I have been even more pained over the years finding out the hard way that he was right.

There seem to be growing numbers of people who feel that those who disagree with them are not merely mistaken but malign, not merely in error but in sin.

The grand fallacy of the political left is that evil is localized in some set of "oppressors" from whom we can be "liberated." That is also its great attraction, for it allows people to attribute their dissatisfactions to other people.

If you have trouble visualizing the billions and trillions of dollars that politicians talk about (and spend) in Washington, think of it this way: A billion seconds ago, John F. Kennedy was President of the United States. And a trillion seconds ago no one on this planet could read or write.

The pacifist mindset is truly a triumph of hope over centuries of experience. One lady writes: "I believe attacking someone for attacking you just fosters more attack and more and never resolves anything." Should we have sat still with folded hands while Hitler took over the world? And would either this lady or I still be here to discuss the issue if he had?

The purpose of politics is not to solve problems but to find problems to justify the expansion of government power and an increase in taxes.

Being slick is the way to gain little things and lose big things.

I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.

What an irony that Richard Nixon was dying while Hillary Clinton was making her own "Checkers" speech. Even a woman with a reputation for being vicious and foul-mouthed among those who have actually dealt with her can still win over a large part of the media by coming on as Little Girl Nice. Anita Hill proved that in 1991 and Hillary has just proved it again.

After all the media puffing up of retiring Justice Harry Blackmun, the liberal "New Republic" magazine has finally said that the emperor has no clothes, that "the liberal lionization of him is cynical" because it is based on nothing more than his having voted for things they liked. Maybe in another fifty years, we can expect similar candor about other justices who have been puffed up for purely political reasons.

When I give a book to a young person starting out in life, I often include on the fly leaf a quotation from the great economist David Ricardo. He wrote to a friend on December 22, 1818: "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."

Those who are for turning criminals loose on all sorts of grounds might ponder the words of Edmund Burke, two centuries ago: "There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men."

Those who talk about helping "the little people" give me a pain. People are the same size, and have the same importance as human beings, whether they are rich or poor. Paternalism toward others has long been camouflage for power and an ego trip for oneself.

People who have been arguing for years for the brotherhood of man are now surprised to discover that it is true, especially when it means that individuals from minority groups can be just as racist as individuals from the majority.

Search committees looking for college presidents should have a stop watch so that they can tell how long each candidate can talk without using the word "diversity."

I cannot understand people who say that minorities should be represented everywhere and yet are upset when there are blacks represented in the conservative movement.

There is no such thing as uncontaminated air or uncontaminated water—or uncontaminated anything else. The only rational question is how much you are prepared to pay to remove what percentage of the impurities. Zealots of course have no interest in that question, The net result is that the government is spending bundles of money to reduce trivial traces of chemicals.

The first rule of bureaucracy is that the bureaucracy is never wrong. If they say you didn't pay your bill, then you didn't pay it, even if you have the canceled check in your hand.

Are we all going to have to become nudists, in order to get through airport security machines?

Historians of the future will have a hard time figuring out how so many organized groups of strident jackasses succeeded in leading us around by the nose and morally intimidating the majority into silence.

When will airlines learn that their passengers prefer food that tastes good to food that looks fancy and sounds pretentious, but tastes like leather and cardboard?

Some medicine bottle caps are on so tight that, if you are strong enough to get them off, you probably aren't all that sick.

Women may lie about their age to other people, but men lie about their age to themselves. That is why middle-aged men injure themselves in athletic activities intended for younger men.

The ideas of the political left are not bad ideas. They just don't apply to human beings. That is why the left has always had to try to change human nature, whether through "re-education" camps, "brainwashing" in China, creating a "Soviet Man" in the U.S.S.R., or "values clarification" programs in American schools.

The anointed talk about the sexuality of the young as if they had discovered it and copyrighted it. Why do they think people in olden times had such things as chaperones, early marriage, separate dormitories, and a thousand other ways of trying to cope with youthful sexuality and its consequences?

How can you insulate people from reality without having them become unrealistic in their decisions and behavior? Yet many people try to provide such insulation to their own adolescent or adult children, and governments try to provide it to all the various clients of the welfare state.

There is so much money, and so much publicity, available for saying far-out things that we are lucky to hear any common sense at all.

It always amazes me that there are people who go out of their way to be difficult—and who are then surprised and bitter when they are fired, divorced or dropped as friends.

There is something obscene about people holding protest rallies in order to try to keep getting money that someone else worked for.

If you are not prepared to get rid of tenure, then you are not going to change our disastrous educational system in any fundamental way.

Whatever cosmetic "reforms" come and go, the same people will keep on doing the same things as long as they have iron-clad job guarantees.

Of all the children I have known who continued to live with their parents after becoming adults, none has turned out well.

When you realize that Germans were brewing beer back in the days of the Roman Empire, how surprised should you be to discover that most of the leading breweries in the United States—Budweiser, Coors, Miller, etc.—were founded by people of German ancestry? Those who expect ethnic or other groups to be randomly distributed are either ignorant of history or oblivious to cause and effect.

Much of what is called "public service" is make-work for people who have degrees but no skills that would get them the kind of money and importance they feel entitled to in the marketplace.

People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.

They say that those who can, do—and those who can't teach. Those who can't teach, indoctrinate.

Some people think that, if they are given certain information in confidence, it is OK to tell someone else in confidence.

A poll shows that the percentage of the public expressing great confidence in our colleges and universities has fallen from 66 percent in 1966 to 25 percent in 1994. The public is right. They do not deserve confidence.

In a letter from a reader: "No one is useless: a person with no good qualities can always serve as a bad example."

Where are all the "privacy" advocates in politics when companies selling everything from newspapers to real estate are making unsolicited phone calls to people's homes—even people with unlisted numbers—waking up babies, disturbing sick people, interrupting lovers, etc.?

The best way to find out what people are really like is to turn your back.

One of the purest of all loves is the love of a bureaucrat for a routine. This is not a love based on crass considerations of efficiency. The routine is loved for its own sweet sake.

Some people who are very dissatisfied with their lives nevertheless have no intention of changing their own behavior. They want to keep on doing what they have always done, but just have it turn out differently.

Beware of anyone who answers your question before you have finished asking it.

The number one rule of traffic safety is: Fools have the right of way. Anyone who qualifies for this privilege should be given it.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave a chilling glimpse of how our world has changed, when he said: "In 1943, there were exactly forty-four homicides by gunshot in all of the City of New York. Last year there were 1,499."

One of the most pathetic—and dangerous—signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.

Those who believe that "basic necessities" should belong to people as a matter of right ignore the implication—that people are to work only for amenities, frivolities, and ego. Will that mean more work or less work? And if less, where are all those "basic necessities" coming from that the government is supposed to hand out?

If the government punishes people for being productive by hitting them with big tax increases, and rewards people for being unproductive by giving them entitlements to the taxpayers' money, how is that likely to lead to a more productive economy?

People who believe in conspiracy theories should ask themselves: Have you ever tried to keep a secret among five people? Even Mafia dons get squealed on.

Heterosexuals and homosexuals should both stay in the closet. Who wants to hear about other people's sex lives?

Advice to the young: You don't have to listen to anybody. You can learn everything from your own personal experience. Of course, you will be at least 50 years old by the time you know what you need to know at 25.

One of the many mysteries of human beings is why some people will never pass on the message you leave. They must either abbreviate it, rephrase it, or otherwise change it. The mischief this can create never seems to occur to them.

There are two kinds of people in this world—those who are "going to" do something and those who actually do it.

If it were up to me, the age of adulthood would never have been lowered from 21 to 18. It would have been raised to 30. In recent decades, people have been taking longer and longer to mature—and increasing numbers never make it.

People who are lax about their personal security should realize that burglars and muggers make a living off other people's carelessness.

I never cease to be amazed at the people who want to make your decision for you, instead of supplying you with the information you need to make your own decision.

Many of the dangerous things that drivers do are not likely to save them even 10 seconds. When you bet your life against 10 seconds, that is giving bigger odds than you are ever likely to get in Las Vegas.

Most problems do not get solved. They get superseded by other concerns.

"No justice, no peace" is yet another of the many clever but shallow and irresponsible phrases of our time. No situation in any society of human beings is likely to be regarded as justice by everyone. Does that mean that everlasting violence is justified?

The last thing you want to do is promote tribalism when you are one of the smaller tribes. Yet minority "leaders" do this because it promotes their individual self-interest, regardless of what bad effects this will have on others, including their followers.

How come the yellow pages list movers but not shakers?

The superstitions of intellectuals are still superstitions—and they have a lot of them. The real question is why we keep listening to them, after their nostrums have failed time and time again.

Have theorists wreaked more havoc than war? It is too close to call. Wars may be more destructive while they are raging, but they occur only at intervals, while half-baked theories are constantly creating needless disasters.

Signs of our times: Lawrence University and a five-college group including Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire and the University of Massachusetts advertised jobs for teaching fellows by race in the September 7th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Whites need not apply.

When will television sports programs learn that sports fans want to see the action on the field—not psychobabble by either announcers or athletes? And when will the camera men learn that people want to see what is happening—not what cute angles they can think up?

Someone has suggested that most so-called "grassroots" political movements should be called Astroturf movements instead, since they are usually artificially created.

One of the depressing things about reading ancient history is that it makes you realize how long human beings have been the way they are—and how unlikely they are to change fundamentally in anyone’s lifetime. On the other hand, it also shows how many stupid and reckless acts the human species has survived.

If the kind of vaguely worded "sexual harassment" codes that are springing up on college campuses around the country had been in effect in the garden of Eden, neither Adam nor Eve would have dared to make the first move—and there would be no human race today.

Wisdom from India: Never stand behind a horse or in front of an official.

I have never understood why businessmen consider it such an honor to serve on a college's board of trustees that they are prepared to condone dishonor in the way the institution is run.

People who talk incessantly about "change" are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.

Boxing is the only sport where neither the athletes nor the spectators are told the score until after the contest is over. What sense does that make?

How can anyone read history and still trust politicians?

Self-respect is the most important thing. Without it, the world's adulation rings hollow. And with it, even venomous attacks are like water off a duck's back.

When you start to worry, you have to ask yourself: Is the worry itself doing more harm than the thing I am worrying about?

One of the best things about going to Harvard is that, for the rest of your life, you are neither intimidated nor impressed by people who went to Harvard.

Maturity is not a matter of age. You have matured when you are no longer concerned with showing how clever you are, and give your full attention to getting the job done right. Many never reach that stage, no matter how old they get.

Bad as it is financially for the federal government to be saddled with the runaway costs of "entitlement" programs, it is far worse for the society as a whole to be saddled with millions of people with the "entitlement" mentality and all the social problems that go with it.

No matter what you say, there are people who will hear only what they want to hear. Many of the heated political controversies of our times can be traced to that simple fact.

One of the most ridiculous defenses of foreign aid is that it is a very small part of our national income. If the average American set fire to a five-dollar bill, it would be an even smaller percentage of his annual income. But everyone would consider him foolish for doing it.

I am prepared to admit that the death penalty does not deter if the opponents of the death penalty can show me just one case where a murderer who was executed then committed another murder.

Isn't it amazing how rhetoric and zealotry can keep hysteria going about "overpopulation," at a time when so many nations around the world have chronic agricultural surpluses and overweight people?

Letters from teachers continue to confirm the incompetence which they deny. A teacher in Montana says that my criticisms of teachers are "nieve." No, it was not a typographical error. He spelled it that way twice.

Sometimes the Republicans seem to be machine-gunning themselves in the foot.

What a wonderful world this would be if there were as many wise people as there are clever people.

It is bad enough to see judges bending over backward and jumping through hoops for the sake of murderers. What is truly staggering is their indifference to the fact that decent, law-abiding people, who have been convicted of nothing, can have their children taken away from them for months without ever having seen a judge, a jury, or the inside of a courtroom—all this based on nothing more than the speculations of social workers.

People who insist that they have a right to their own opinions usually mean that they have a right to inflict those opinions on unwilling listeners. They also usually don't want to be confused with the facts.

If I could offer one piece of advice to young people thinking about their future, it would be this: Don't preconceive. Find out what the opportunities are.

Someone has said that human beings are the only creatures that blush—or that need to.

What do phrases like "glass ceiling" and "covert discrimination" mean, except that we are expected to accept claims without evidence?

Back in the heyday of the British Empire, a visitor from one of the colonies said to a London audience: "Please, do not do any more good in my country. We have suffered too much from the good that you have done already." That is my reaction to most of the liberal social programs for minorities and the poor today.

The rewriting of history has cast Republicans in the role of opponents of civil rights. But, when the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed, a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for both bills in both houses of Congress.

Among the never-ending claims of discrimination is a recent charge that the game show "Jeopardy" discriminates against minority individuals who want to be contestants. This seemed particularly silly to me, since I was on "Jeopardy" before Alex Trebek was on "Jeopardy." I was a contestant back in the 1960s.

Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.

When the end of the millennium arrives, someone may say: "It is the year 2000. Do you know where your country is?"

Even if we could make all the idiotic ideas and practices of our public schools magically disappear overnight, it would not do the slightest good, so long as the same shallow people were there the next day to find new idiocies to substitute for the hard work of teaching academic skills.

It used to be said that taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. Today, taxes are the price we pay so that politicians can buy the votes of those who are feeding at the public trough.

Environmentalists love flattering themselves that trekking around in national parks is living in the wilderness. But this "wilderness" is presided over by a huge bureaucracy supported by billions of tax dollars and has in reserve everything from rescue helicopters to high-tech medical facilities. It is make-believe primitiveness, Disneyland for the anointed.

One of the worst examples of betrayal of trust are those judges who use the courtroom not as a place for enforcing the law and protecting the public, but as a stage for their own moral preening.

A reader who agrees with my impression that there are more good looking women in the conservative movement than in movements on the left also suggests that this may be why more men are turning to ward conservatism!

They say that love is blind. Nowhere is this more true than in love of jargon, which is one of the biggest obstacles to understanding.

What is so rare as a day in June? Common sense on the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The American public schools' preoccupation with promoting "self-esteem" has been an overwhelming success. All sorts of people have tons of self-esteem, even when they are ignorant or incompetent.

Someone has come up with a sure-fire formula for making a small fortune in the oil business: Start with a large fortune and know when to quit.

People who believe in affirmative action have yet to explain why something that happened 40 years ago justifies discrimination against some guy who is 39.

When I think of all the genuine suffering in this world, I am offended by the fad of calling the ordinary vicissitudes of life "traumas."

The best obituary a man can have is that the people who knew him loved him, even if those who didn't know him hated him.

Too many people fail to see a distinction between "the rule of law" and the edicts of judges. Unfortunately, these people include many judges.

Liberals are horrified that the recently passed Republican welfare reform bill can force able-bodied people off welfare after two years. How many other Americans can live for two years without working?

My wife and I always agree in principle. For example, we both believe that things should not be put off until the last minute. We just disagree as to when is the last minute.

No one is more dogmatically insistent on conformity than those who advocate "diversity."

One of the most amazing examples of the childishness of our times is that so many individuals and groups think that they have a right to other people's favorable opinion—and that institutions or the government should punish or "re-educate" others who don't have a favorable opinion of them.

Many of the most fervent apostles of "informed consent" see no need for informed consent when it comes to judges changing the meaning of the constitution by "interpretations" that increasingly deprive the people of the fundamental right of self-government.

One of the mindless words of our times is "change." As someone has pointed out, there is always change—except from vending machines.

Did you know that a town in Montana has been named "Joe"?

A publication from New Zealand complains because New Zealand students rank below students from 14 other countries on international tests. Unfortunately, the United States ranks 14 countries below New Zealand.

Equal opportunity policies are against racism. Affirmative action is racism under new management.

Despite downsizing elsewhere, a recent study shows that we overweight Americans are now in the majority. Should we organize politically and have slogans like "Fat Power"?

Demagogues have always aimed their messages at the unthinking and the uninformed. Unfortunately, today that includes many of our college students.

To people who ask, "Why are we building more prisons instead of more schools?" the answer is simple: Prisons work and schools don't. Study after study has shown that even huge differences in spending on public schools make little or no difference in the quality of the education itself. Why should we allow criminals to walk the street while we create ever more expensive educational failures?

Everything has its good points. Even poison is non-habit-forming.

Know-it-alls really irritate me. Nobody knows even 10 percent of all.

Too many teachers today see their role as propagandists for the fashionable notions of the times. Their own "role model" is not Mr. Chips but Joseph Goebbels.

Whenever there is a proposal for a tax cut, media pundits demand to know how you are going to pay for it. But when there are proposals for more spending on social programs, those same pundits are strangely silent.

The only people I truly envy are those who can play a musical instrument and those who can eat anything they want without gaining weight.

Some people think that it is a strong argument for their side if they can cite a precedent for what they are advocating. But there are precedents for everything bad, from jay-walking to genocide.

Why do we keep getting panicked when we hear dire predictions from groups who are in the business of making dire predictions? Who would ever have heard about outfits like the Worldwatch Institute or the Center for Science in the Public Interest if they didn't go around constantly saying that the sky is falling?

I have no sympathy with parents who are embarrassed by their chilren's behavior in public. They should have raised them at home.

Insulating people from reality produces unrealistic people. It doesn't matter whether they are welfare recipients, spoiled rich kids, tenured professors in the ivy league, or federal judges with lifetime appointments.

Some say that the best defense is a good offense, so it is not surprising that parents who object to having their children brainwashed in the public schools are attacked for "censorship." What is surprising how often the schools get away with it because we don't bother to analyze what they are saying.

There is something obscene about judges and journalists nit-picking at leisure, and in safety and comfort, a life-and-death decision that some policeman had a split second to make.

Why does it seem to take longer to check out at cash registers, now that they have high-speed and high-tech equipment?

How can the same people say that it is morally and legally all right to have a racial spoils system today and yet that it was wrong to have had racial segregation and discrimination during the Jim Crow era? Is it just a matter of whose ox is gored? And were all the rest of us wrong to think that there was a moral principle involved?

One of the great mysteries of our time is why so many people who are either born rich or who gain great wealth in the media are so hostile to the values of American society and Western civilization. The most plausible explanation I have heard is that this stance enables them to enjoy their wealth with a clearer conscience as friends of the "underdogs" and enemies of "the establishment"—even though in reality they are really friends of parasites and enemies of civilization.

Some people justify their actions by saying "I have a right" to do this or that. We all have a right to do many things that it would make no sense to do.

Why do some restaurants play music more suitable for the young people who work there than for the middle-aged people who eat there?

Economists may not be able to cure our financial problems but their writings can cure insomnia.

Is it just my imagination or do these cold waves strike right after there has been a lot of talk about "global warming"?

One of the most heartbreaking statistics I have seen lately is that a quarter of a million Americans are emigrating from this country annually—and that one-fourth of all Americans earning over $50,000 a year have considered it.

After all the campaigns for "a drug-free workplace," former Republican White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater refers to the city of Washington as "a work-free drug place."

The political left has never understood that, if you give the government enough power to create "social justice," you have given it enough power to create despotism. Millions of people around the world have paid with their lives for overlooking that simple fact.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a study of more than 3,000 witnesses testifying before Congress showed that most had themselves received federal money. Almost all of them advocated more federal spending.

Despite how often we hear race described as the worst source of hatred, the most hideous atrocities of our time have been committed by whites against other whites in the Balkans and blacks against other blacks in Africa.

One of the most ridiculous causes of automobile accidents is that some people are very eager to save very small amounts of time.

Letter from a working mother whose children are now grown: "Today we have our payoff. We live in a beautiful home and I drive a new Cadillac. I have literally everything I want. My husband buys me enormous gifts. People say we are rich. I would burn my house to the ground if I could go back to that day at the day care when I pulled away from clinging hands and cried all the way to work."

It is amazing how much time and ingenuity people will put into defending some idea that they never bothered to think through at the outset.

If you don't believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children.

There are too many people who ought to be grateful for their good fortune, but who are arrogant instead.

Cheap behavior can turn out to be very expensive behavior.

Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.

One of the many signs of mushy thinking today is the claim that arguments against homosexuals or women in the military are parallel to arguments against blacks in the past. Think about it: The arguments against eating toadstools are parallel to arguments against eating tomatoes in the past. The only difference is that tomatoes don't kill nearly as many people as toadstools.

The number of expensive watches around always amazes me—especially since cheap electronic watches keep about as good time as the most expensive electronic watches.

Don't you get sick and tired of being propagandized and warned almost everywhere you turn? Someone said: "They are the missionaries and we are the Hottentots."

Time was when people used to brag about how old they were—and I an old enough to remember it. I can't claim to be old enough to remember when Moby Dick was a minnow. But I am old enough to remember when people trusted the government—which was almost as long ago.

Some people are fast asleep and slow awake.

Happiness is opening your bills on the first of the month and discovering that you have credit balances.

Perhaps it is just the generation gap, but I have never been able to understand the rush to get little toddlers out the door and into preschools and kindergartens. Phyllis Schlafly says, "the only thing you get in kindergarten is germs." Someone else said, "the earlier you institutionalize your children, the earlier they will institutionalize you"—in a nursing home, that is.

It is one of the pathetic signs of the "me generation" that some people think it is a defense of some government policy to say, "I benefitted from it." Nazis benefitted from Hitler!

Some people are such masters of the half-truth that it would be a waste of talent for them to lie.

One of the most dangerous trends of our times is that increasing numbers of people have a vested interest in the helplessness of other people.

When the history of corporate America is written, one of its most shameful chapters will be about how big business sold out to political correctness, by inflicting the harangues of "diversity consultants" on their employees and donating their stockholders' money to advocacy groups opposed to the free market on which their own existence depends.

When you find yourself "keeping score" in a personal relationship, that is a sign that you may lose the whole relationship.

Environmentalism is not about the environment. It is about ego trips for busy bodies.

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16 June 2024