About Slavery

The confining of discussions of slavery to that of blacks held in bondage by whites is just one of the many ways in which the agendas of the present distort our understanding of the past, forfeiting valuable lessons that an unfiltered knowledge of the past could teach. At a minimum, the worldwide history of slavery should be a grim warning for all people, and for all time, against giving any human beings unbridled power over other human beings, regardless of hows attractively that unbridled power might be packaged rhetorically.

Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, Pg.221

Don’t Lower Standards

Vast amounts of evidence, accumulated over the years, show that the particular circumstances in which members of lagging groups have not only succeeded but excelled, have almost invariably been circumstances where there was no lowering of standards for them, and where ruthless competition was the norm for all.

Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, Pg.200

The Magic of Words vs Education

In many cases, educators verbally transmute higher capabilities into “privilege.” Through the magic of words, and in the name of “social justice,” such educators oppose using the schools to facilitate the development of special individual abilities that can benefit society as a whole, because that can cause an expansion of educational disparities and the economical disparities that follow. Many of those with this social vision not only proceed as if society is a zero-sum process, in which benefits to one segment necessarily come at the expense of other segments, they also often ignore, dismiss or demonize other ways of looking at the situation.

Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, Pg.191-192

Learn From Mistakes

If we look back on our past life we shall see that one of its most usual experiences is that we have been helped by our mistakes.

Winston Churchill, cited in The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, edited by Max Morris, pg.100

Exhilaration

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Winston Churchill, cited in The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, edited by Max Morris, pg. 99

Don’t Turn Your Back on Danger

One ought never to turn one’s back on threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.

Winston Churchill, cited in The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, edited by Max Morris, pg.98

Success

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill, cited in The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, edited by Max Morris, pg.95

Life is A Relay Race

To deny that a particular factor can be assumed a priori to be the cause of inequalities in outcomes is not to deny that the chances of achieving those outcomes have in fact been grossly unequal in societies around the world, and over thousands of years of recorded history. In a sense, life is a relay race, and each of us receives the baton at a time and place over which we have no control. Our parents, our birth order, our country and our surrounding culture have already been predetermined for us. Some of the prerequisites for achievement can be affected later by individual choices or social policies, but by no means 100 percent in most cases, much less in all cases. No human being and no human institution has either sufficient knowledge or sufficient power for that. More important, we have zero control over the past— and, as was said, long ago, “We do not live in the past, but the past in us.”

Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, Pg.187

Bad Company Corrupts Good Morals

A survey of more than 90,000 black, white and Hispanic high school and junior high school students from 175 schools in 80 American communities found that those black students whose grade-point average reached 3.5 or higher had fewer friends of their own race than blacks with lower grade-point averages. Such negative reactions by fellow black students to those among them who were higher achievers in school have been characterized as a rejection of those who were stigmatized as “acting white”— that is, behaving in ways that were equated with disloyalty to their race.

An empirical study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that having a higher percentage of black schoolmates had a strong negative effect on the educational achievements of black students— especially high-ability black students. Another study, of ability-grouping in general, found that educating students among others of similar ability levels improved the academic performance of high-ability students— and especially high-ability minority students.

Such patterns have by not means been confined to blacks or even to the United States Among Hispanic American students, those with a grade-point average of 4.0 averaged 3 fewer friends of their own ethnicity than did white students with a 4.0 grade-point average. Similar negative reactions to educational achievements among their peers have been found among Maoris in New Zealand, Burakumin in Japan and the white underclass in Britain.

Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, pg.167

No Moral Background = Totalitarianism

Free Speech

Everyone is in favour of free speech…but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.

Winston Churchill, cited in The Smart Words and Wicked Wit of Winston Churchill, edited by Max Morris, pg. 81