Thomas Sowell Quotes

I recommend Thomas Sowell's recent editorials: Dismantling America, Part I and Dismantling America, Part II. In case you are not familiar with him, Dr. Sowell is an American economist, social commentator, and author of dozens of books. His views on race and economics, poverty and politics are often provocative (see Crippled by their Culture) and inspiring and always deeply rooted in his courageous and honest exploration of life in America. Below are inspired quotes on economics, freedom and government from the brilliant Dr. Sowell.

One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.

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

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

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

One of the consequences of such notions as "entitlements" is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.

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

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

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.

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.

The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help."

Most people who read "The Communist Manifesto" probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives, and who nevertheless spoke boldly in the name of "the workers".

Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.

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.

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.

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.

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

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have cost without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more to produce than if they were produced by enterprises operating without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits.

Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other 90 percent of the people?"

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.

We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it.

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.

Those things that help human beings be independent and self-reliant—whether automobiles, guns, the free market, or vouchers—provoke instant hostility from the anointed.

This must be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance.

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.

The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity.

The fraudulence of the left’s concern about poverty is exposed by their utter lack of interest in ways of increasing the nation’s wealth. Wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty. The reason there is less poverty today is not because the poor got a bigger slice of the pie but because the whole pie got a lot bigger—no thanks to the left.