Thomas Sowell Quotes

“American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected.”

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

“If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live.”

“In the wake of the housing debacle in California, more people are buying less expensive homes, making bigger down payments, and staying away from 'creative' and risky financing. It is amazing how fast people learn when they are not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.”

“It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it "greed" to want to keep what you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes.”

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

“Even if her children or grandchildren are willing to spend their own money to keep grandma alive, when bureaucrats control the necessary technology or medication they may decide that it is not for sale.”

“The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances.”

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

“One of the problems with trying to help underdogs, especially with government programs, is that they and everyone else start to think of them as underdogs, focusing on their problems rather than their opportunities. Thinking of themselves as underdogs can also dissipate their energies in resentments of others, rather than spending that energy making the most of their own possibilities.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Informal relationships are not mere minor interstitial supplements to the major institutions of society. These informal relationships not only include important decision-making processes, such as the family, but also produce much of the background social capital without which the other major institutions of society could not function nearly as effectively as they do.”

“When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.”

“Deep thinkers who look everywhere for the mysterious causes of poverty, ignorance, crime and war need look no further than their own mirrors. We are all born into this world poor and ignorant, and with thoroughly selfish and barbaric impulses. Those of us who turn out any other way do so largely through the efforts of others, who civilized us before we got big enough to do too much damage to the world or ourselves.”

“What makes it possible for politicians to do so many things that are economically counterproductive is that neither the public nor the media know enough of the basics to understand what's wrong with what they're saying.”

“As a rule of thumb. Congressional legislation that is bipartisan is usually twice as bad as legislation that is partisan.”

“The political mirage of something for nothing, from leaders who 'care,' has ruined many a nation.”

“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.”

“Fairness' is one of the great mantras of the left. Since everyone has his own definition of fairness, that word is a blank check for the expansion of government power. What fairness means in practice is that third parties -- busybodies -- can prevent mutual accommodations by others.”

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

“How you treat the helpless is the real test of morality. Lots of people are flunking that test big time.”

“The idea that money is corrupting innocent politicians would be laughable if it did not lead to such dangerous legislation.”

“Organizational progress parallels that in science and technology, permitting ultimate simplicity through intermediate complexity.”

“If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback.”