QuoteProject
Being willing to donate the taxpayers' money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is.
Thomas Sowell
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote highlights the difference between spending others' money and risking one's own resources in support of a belief.

Thomas Sowell's quote emphasizes that while people may freely advocate for using public funds for various causes, true commitment and integrity require personal investment and sacrifice. It illustrates a common tendency to offer solutions that rely on the resources of others rather than reflecting a genuine willingness to contribute one's own resources.

Themes

TaxpayerMoneyCommitmentSacrificeIntegrity

In practice

Example use cases

During a political debate about budget allocation.

More from Thomas Sowell

Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Thomas SowellRead
Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
Thomas SowellRead
One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.
Thomas SowellRead
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
Thomas SowellRead
The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Thomas SowellRead
Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.
Thomas SowellRead

Similar quotes

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
Saint AugustineRead
A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within....for the traitor appears not to be a traitor...he rots the soul of a nation...he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead
The great home of the soul is the open road.
D. H. LawrenceRead
Some countries have good laws, laws which could stem the tide of HIV. The problem is that these laws are flouted. Because stigma gives unofficial license to treat people living with HIV or those at greatest risk unlike other citizens.
Shereen El FekiRead
Every church that has a standard higher than human welfare is dangerous.
Robert Green IngersollRead
Herein lies the tragedy of the age: Not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty. Not that men are wicked, - who is good? Not that men are ignorant, - what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.
W. E. B. Du BoisRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.