Thomas Sowell Quotes

Network news accustoms audiences to assertion not argument. Over time, it reinforces the notion that politics is about visceral identification and apposition, not complex problems and their solutions. ... sound bites aren't very helpful. They can tell a voter what a candidate believes, but not why. And many issues are too complex to be freeze dried into a slogan and a smile. ... What's lost in a world in which everything's an ad? Perhaps the country that created the assembly line has simply found a more efficient way to do politics.

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre.

It's easy to respond to the hate cries, usually carefully wrapped up in a flag. Perhaps hate is the greatest simplifier of them all. It's the man with the throb in his voice, the man with the easy formula, the man who tries to shout to my emotions instead of speaking to my mind, the man who is sure he is right that I run from like hell.

You run an ad claiming that [Mitt] Romney is an absolute unfeeling, mean-spirited animal hater because in the example they gave he put his dog on the roof of the station wagon during the family vacation. Why does it work? Why did it stick?And there is an answer.When they [Democrates] ran the ads about guy's wife dying with cancer...? Remember this? This was a serious series of ads, and it was deadly effective.

A newspaper reported I spend $30,000 a year buying Paris clothes and that women hate me for it. I couldn't spend that much unless I wore sable underwear.

You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don't rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again.

It's just, "Hey,[Barack] Obama's the hero, and he wants Obamacare," and so the coverage is totally devoted to whether or not Obama's gonna get it. Now, in that scenario, who are the villains?Well, your good old, reliable Republicans are the villains, and they are always portrayed as the people trying to deny our beloved hero what he wants.

The more skillful the performance of false cheer, the more pleasing the effect is upon one's public and on that private audience to whom one owes even more.

I hate to admit this, but some days hearing about other people's problems actually cheers me up.

In an interview, Paris Hilton said that of her and her sister, "People love to hate us. But when you know us, you love us. And if you really get to know us, you get gonorrhea."

Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.

I make it easier for people to leave by making them hate me a little.

The man that is once hated, both his good and his evil deeds oppress him.

When it looks at great accomplishments, the world, bent on simplifying its images, likes best to look at the dramatic, picturesquemoments experienced by its heroes.... But the no less creative years of preparation remain in the shadow.

The film [Django] really has a lot of ups and downs, and taps into a lot of different emotions. To me, the trick was balancing all those emotions, so that I could get you where I wanted you to be by the very end. I wanted the audience cheering in triumph at the end.

There's a good reason for the media hating me. And once I came to grips with that fact, that there's a reason they should hate me, then it makes sense. One of the toughest things I had to do was learn to psychologically accept the fact that being hated was a sign of success.

I hate the word celebrity. I'm not a celebrity, I'm an actor.

The benefits and $174,000 per year salary that we get, we earn. It's not elaborate, it's just a bunch of poppycock that a lot of people have spread around trying to get us to hate our own government and our government representatives.

I feel like people might be slightly less inclined to hate me as much as they did in the past, and I think part of that is selling fewer records.

She can't keep writing about what a tragic little hero I am, it'll get boring.

Love's an excuse to get hurt and to hurt. Do you like to hurt? I do, I do then hurt me.

I've always hate child stars, starting from way back when, when I was a child. The first child star I saw was Shirley Temple. She was six years old, two foot six and the biggest star in Hollywood. She wore ribbons in her hair, and frilly little pinafores and shiny patent-leather tap shoes - just like the boys in Glee do.

You never have to wait long, or look far, to be reminded of how thin the line is between being a hero or a goat.

In the U.S., African- Americans, no matter what we do - when we sit in, when we freedom ride, when we kneel in, whatever it is, the initial response from the public tends to be overwhelmingly negative, because basically we're kind of raining on folks' parades. As time goes on, the Muhammad Ali's and all the people that raised those issues, they then become heroes later when people reflect on the courage they showed and the issues that they raised. And Donald Trump is in danger of being a more and more reviled figure as the years go on.

Don't associate me with comedy. And please don't say actress. I would never call myself any of those things. I hate it when people call me that.