Thomas Sowell Quotes

There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else.

If you truly believe in the brotherhood of man, then you must believe that blacks are just as capable of being racists as whites are.

If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is - and why government keeps growing larger and ever more intrusive.

As taxpayers, we have quietly accepted the fact that our taxes will be spent to pay big bucks for all sorts of ugly, twisted metal to be displayed in front of or inside government buildings, in the name of 'art' that was obviously never meant to give the public any enjoyment and often represented a thumbing of the artist's nose at the public.

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.

The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means that in social processes, as in economic processes, it is not only impossible to attain perfection but irrational to seek perfection- or even to seek the best possible result in each separate instance.

The income tax has spawned an intrusive bureaucracy, creating so much complexity and red tape that millions of ordinary citizens have to go get some accountant to fill out the forms for them - and then sign under penalty of perjury that it was done right. If you knew how to do it right, you wouldn't have to go to somebody else to have it done, would you?

Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom.

Any policy is a success by sufficiently low standards and a failure by sufficiently high standards.

The talkers and writers resent being left on the sidelines by the doers.

Barack Obama has done more than anyone else to promote the dangerous illusion that we can choose whether to have a war or not. But our enemies have already made that choice. Retired Marine Corps General James Mattis said: “No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it's over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote“.

Politicians are forever coming up with 'solutions' to virtually every imaginable imperfection in life. But, if we give them more power and more of our money, we are very unlikely to end up better off on net balance.

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.

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

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

One of the painfully sobering realizations that come from reading history is the utter incompetence that is possible among leaders of whole nations and empires - and the blind faith that such leaders can nevertheless inspire among the people who are enthralled by their words or their posturing.

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves

Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.

The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution.

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.

Another way of verbally masking elite preemption of other people's decisions is to use the word 'ask'-as in 'We are just asking everyone to pay their fair share.' But of course governments do not ask, they: tell. The Internal Revenue Service does not 'ask' for contributions. It takes.

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

Stupid people can cause problems, but it usually takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

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

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.

The biggest difference between people is between those who are trying to do the right thing - whether or not they succeed - and those for whom the only question is how much they can get away with.

Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.

It is precisely those members of Congress who have had the most to do with creating the risks that led to the current economic crisis who are making the most noise against others, and summoning people before their committee to be browbeaten and humiliated on nationwide television.

Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them.

One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience.

Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.

One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.

Intellect is not wisdom.

In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.

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.

Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics. Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy.

However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society where others are free.

Tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom.

A lot of what is called 'public service' consists of making hoops for other people to jump through. It is a great career for those who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.

Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options

The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against.

Just as any moron can destroy a priceless Ming vase, so the shallow and ill-educated people who run our schools can undermine and destroy from within a great civilization that took centuries of dedicated effort to create and maintain.

Both history and contemporary data show that countries prosper more when there are stable and dependable rules, under which people can make investments without having to fear unpredictable new government interventions before these investments can pay off.

It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.

You may have the right to live anyway you like, but you don't have a right to have other people like it. Respect it or pay for it.

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

Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.

What does calling this medical care legislation "historic" mean? It means that previous administrations gave up the idea when it became clear that the voting public did not want government control of medical care. What is "historic" is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn't care one bit what the public wants or doesn't want.

Everyone may be called "comrade," but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.

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

In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media.

We never really know and the very fact that there are such words in the language as disappointment, regret, etc., is testimony to the pervasiveness and persistence of this feature of the human condition.

The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one's own behavior.

However little president Obama knows or cares about economics, he knows a lot about politics - and especially political rhetoric. 'High-speed rail' is simply another set of loft words to justify continued expansion of government spending. So are words like 'investment in education' or 'investment' in any number of other things, which serves the same political purpose.

Someone once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of our own ignorance. Our schools are depriving millions of students of that kind of knowledge by promoting "self-esteem" and encouraging them to have opinions on things of which they are grossly ignorant, if not misinformed.

What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice.

In this era of non-judgmental mush, too many Americans have become incapable of facing the brutal reality of unprovoked hatred, based on envy, resentment and ultimately on a vicious urge to lash out against others for the pain of ones own insignificance. That has been a common thread in things as disparate as ghetto riots, two world wars, and now Islamic terrorism.

What the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.