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In economic terms, taking what others have produced and giving it to those who have not produced as much (or at all, in some cases) is make-believe equality - as contrasted with real equality, which would be enabling the less productive to become more productive, so that they could create for themselves what they are trying to take from others.

— Thomas Sowell Intellectuals and Race (2013)

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Equality

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

Knowledge and Decisions (1980)

If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy.

Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.

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The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.

Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups.

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Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

Mikhail Bakunin The Red Association (1870)

The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.

Milton Friedman

It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

Felix Frankfurter

It is not true that equality is a law of nature. nature has made nothing equal, her sovereign law is subordination and dependence.

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues Reflections and Maxims (1746)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Sowell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.