Thomas Sowell

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

— Thomas Sowell

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

— Thomas Sowell

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

— Thomas Sowell

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

— Thomas Sowell

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

— Thomas Sowell

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

— Thomas Sowell

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

— Thomas Sowell

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?

— Thomas Sowell

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

— 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 Sowell

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

— Thomas Sowell

If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.

— Thomas Sowell

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

— Thomas Sowell

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

— Thomas Sowell

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

— Thomas Sowell

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

— Thomas Sowell

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

— Thomas Sowell

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

— Thomas Sowell

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

— Thomas Sowell

Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.

— Thomas Sowell

Although the big word on the left is 'compassion,' the big agenda on the left is dependency.

— Thomas Sowell

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

— Thomas Sowell

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.

— Thomas Sowell

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

— Thomas Sowell

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

— Thomas Sowell

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

— Thomas Sowell

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

— Thomas Sowell

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

— Thomas Sowell

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

— Thomas Sowell

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

— Thomas Sowell

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

— Thomas Sowell

Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?

— Thomas Sowell

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

— Thomas Sowell

Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.

— Thomas Sowell

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

— Thomas Sowell

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.

— Thomas Sowell

Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting 'the rich' to pay 'their fair share' is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.

— Thomas Sowell

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.

— Thomas Sowell

Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America.

— Thomas Sowell

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other 'studies' was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these 'studies' are about propaganda rather than serious education.

— Thomas Sowell

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new 'solution' to society's 'problems.'

— Thomas Sowell

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

— Thomas Sowell

Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.

— Thomas Sowell

Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.

— Thomas Sowell

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

— Thomas Sowell

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

— Thomas Sowell

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people - and to hate those other people.

— Thomas Sowell

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

— Thomas Sowell

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left - which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study - are not likely to get much attention.

— Thomas Sowell

I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals' imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.

— Thomas Sowell

Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated - preemptively and unilaterally, if necessary.

— Thomas Sowell

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

— Thomas Sowell

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

— Thomas Sowell

Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?

— Thomas Sowell

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

— Thomas Sowell

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

— Thomas Sowell

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

— Thomas Sowell

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.

— Thomas Sowell

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

— Thomas Sowell

Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.

— Thomas Sowell

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

— Thomas Sowell

Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

— Thomas Sowell

All too often when liberals cite statistics, they forget the statisticians' warning that correlation is not causation.

— Thomas Sowell

The Congressional Budget Office has been embarrassed repeatedly by making projections based on the assumption that tax revenues and tax rates move in the same direction.

— Thomas Sowell

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.

— Thomas Sowell

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

— Thomas Sowell

You don't send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like 'shooting an unarmed child,' when that 'child' was beating him bloody.

— Thomas Sowell

Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.

— Thomas Sowell

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

— Thomas Sowell

If you want to get each individual's honest opinion, you don't want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

— Thomas Sowell

A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.

— Thomas Sowell

The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

— Thomas Sowell

Few professors would dare to publish research or teach a course debunking the claims made in various ethnic, gender, or other 'studies' courses.

— Thomas Sowell

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

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left - which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study - are not likely to get much attention.

— Thomas Sowell

The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

— Thomas Sowell

I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals' imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.

— Thomas Sowell

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

— Thomas Sowell

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

— Thomas Sowell

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

— Thomas Sowell

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

— Thomas Sowell

Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.

— Thomas Sowell

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

— Thomas Sowell

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

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

— Thomas Sowell

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

— Thomas Sowell

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

— Thomas Sowell

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

— Thomas Sowell

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

— Thomas Sowell

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

— Thomas Sowell

What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.

— Thomas Sowell

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

— Thomas Sowell

Too many Republicans treat English as a second language, with Beltway lingo being their native tongue.

— Thomas Sowell

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

— Thomas Sowell

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

— Thomas Sowell

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

— Thomas Sowell

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.

— Thomas Sowell

Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.

— Thomas Sowell

Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier.

— Thomas Sowell

Civilization is an enormous device for economizing on knowledge.

— Thomas Sowell

Knowledge may be enjoyed as a speculative diversion, but it is needed for decision making.

— Thomas Sowell

While decisions are constrained by the kinds of organizations and the kinds of knowledge involved, the Impetus for decisions comes from the internal preferences and external incentives facing those who actually make the decisions.

— Thomas Sowell

Key indicators require some specified time span during which they are to be tabulated for purposes of reward or penalty. The time span can vary enormously according to the process and the indicator.

— Thomas Sowell

Before attempting to determine the effect of institutions, it is necessary to consider the inherent circumstances, constraints, and impelling forces at work in the environment within which the institutional mechanisms function.

— Thomas Sowell

If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

— Thomas Sowell

Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.

— Thomas Sowell

One of the grand fallacies of our time is that something beneficial should be subsidized.

— Thomas Sowell

The case for the political left looks more plausible on the surface but is harder to keep believing in as you become more experienced.

— Thomas Sowell

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

— Thomas Sowell

Understanding the limitations of human beings is the beginning of wisdom.

— Thomas Sowell

The key feature of Communist propaganda has been the depiction of people who are more productive as mere exploiters of others.

— Thomas Sowell

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.

— Thomas Sowell

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

— Thomas Sowell

Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

— Thomas Sowell

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

— Thomas Sowell

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

— Thomas Sowell

History shows that degeneracy can be turned around because it has been done in the past. But the real question today is: Will we turn it around-or is what we are doing likely to make matters worse?

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

— Thomas Sowell

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?

— Thomas Sowell

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

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.

— Thomas Sowell

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

Time was when people used to brag about how old they were -- and I am old enough to remember it.

— Thomas Sowell

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. Know-it-alls in the school system do not lose one dime or one hour's sleep if their bright ideas turn out to be all wrong, or even disastrous, for the child.

— Thomas Sowell

People who think that they are being "exploited" should ask themselves whether they would be missed if they left, or whether people would say: "Good riddance"?

— Thomas Sowell

Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.

— Thomas Sowell

I'm always embarrassed when people say that I'm courageous. Soldiers are courageous. Policemen are courageous. Firemen are courageous. I just have a thick hide and disregard what silly people say.

— Thomas Sowell

Before the Iraq war I was quite disturbed by some of the neoconservatives, who were saying things like, "What is the point of being a superpower if you can't do such-and-such, take on these responsibilities?" The point of being a superpower is that people will leave you alone.

— Thomas Sowell

It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.

— Thomas Sowell

Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened.

— Thomas Sowell

Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism.

— Thomas Sowell

Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism.

— Thomas Sowell

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

— Thomas Sowell

Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.

— Thomas Sowell

Too often what are called "educated" people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.

— Thomas Sowell

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.

— Thomas Sowell

Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me.

— Thomas Sowell

Right after liberal Democrats, the most dangerous politicians are country club Republicans.

— Thomas Sowell

Republicans won big, running as Republicans, in 2004. But once they took control of Congress, they started acting like Democrats and lost big. There is a lesson in that somewhere but whether Republicans will learn it is another story entirely.

— Thomas Sowell

When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is 'control.' That is what the political left is all about, as you can see by the incessant creation of new restrictions in places where they are strongly entrenched in power, such as San Francisco or New York.

— Thomas Sowell

To find anything comparable to crowds' euphoric reactions to Obama, you would have to go back to old newsreels of German crowds in the 1930s, with their adulation of their fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. With hindsight, we can look back on those people with pity, knowing now how many of them would be led to their deaths by the man they idolized.

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called 'social justice' might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society. Such a conception of justice seeks to correct, not only biased or discriminatory acts by individuals or by social institutions, but unmerited disadvantages in general, from whatever source they may arise.

— Thomas Sowell

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

— Thomas Sowell

It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.

— Thomas Sowell

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left - which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study - are not likely to get much attention.

— Thomas Sowell

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer "universal health care."

— Thomas Sowell

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.

— Thomas Sowell

Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?

— Thomas Sowell

Envy is always referred to by its political alias, 'social justice'.

— Thomas Sowell

The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.

— Thomas Sowell

Neither in nature nor among human beings are either equal or randomly distributed outcomes automatic. On the contrary, grossly unequal distributions of outcomes are common, both in nature and among people, in circumstances where neither genes nor discrimination are involved... The idea that it would be a level playing field, if it were not for either genes or discrimination, is a preconception in defiance of both logic and facts.

— Thomas Sowell

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

— Thomas Sowell

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

— Thomas Sowell

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

— Thomas Sowell

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

— Thomas Sowell

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

— Thomas Sowell

What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

— Thomas Sowell

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

— Thomas Sowell

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

— Thomas Sowell

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.

— Thomas Sowell

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.

— Thomas Sowell

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

— Thomas Sowell

Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions.

— Thomas Sowell

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other 'studies' was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these 'studies' are about propaganda rather than serious education.

— Thomas Sowell

The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'

— Thomas Sowell

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

— Thomas Sowell

Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

— Thomas Sowell

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

— Thomas Sowell

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

— Thomas Sowell

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

— Thomas Sowell

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

— Thomas Sowell

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

— Thomas Sowell

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

— Thomas Sowell

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

— Thomas Sowell

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

— Thomas Sowell

The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.

— Thomas Sowell

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.

— Thomas Sowell

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

— Thomas Sowell

Facts are not liberals' strong suit. Rhetoric is.

— Thomas Sowell

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

— Thomas Sowell

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.

— Thomas Sowell

The real minimum wage is zero.

— Thomas Sowell

It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

— Thomas Sowell

The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his 'basic rights.'

— Thomas Sowell