Skip to content

Politics Quotes by Thomas Sowell

151 Politics quotes by Thomas Sowell

All Politics quotes Thomas Sowell’s page

When politicians claim the right to take your house for a campaign, they’re using eminent domain. The quotes warn that caring too much about words can blind us to real problems. They also say that money can corrupt officials and push dangerous laws.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

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

Image

What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts.

Image

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

Image

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

Image

There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse.

Image

What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?

Image

Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped.

Image

Government bailouts are like potato chips: You can't stop with just one.

Image

In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities.

Image

In the political language of today, people who want to keep what they have earned are said to be greedy, while those…

Image

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would…

Image

How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away…

Image

People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of…

Image

Wise men wrote the Constitution, but clever judges have been destroying it, bit by bit, turning it into an instrument of arbitrary…

Image

Whether as a radical student, a community organizer or a far left politician, Barack Obama's ideology has been based on a vision…

Image

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in…

Image

Implicit in the activist conception of government is the assumption that you can take the good things in a complex system for…

Image

Barack Obama's vision of America is one in which a President of the United States can fire the head of General Motors,…

Image

Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest…

Image

Much of the world today, including the United States, is still living in the social, cultural, and political aftermath of Britain's cultural…

Image

People who know nothing about advertising, nothing about pharmaceuticals, and nothing about economics have been loudly proclaiming that the drug companies spend…

Image

One of the problems with trying to help underdogs, especially with government programs, is that they and everyone else start to think…

Image

'Fair' is one of the most dangerous concepts in politics. Since no two people are likely to agree on what is 'fair,'…

Image

If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the…

Image

“The staunchest conservatives advocate a range of changes which differ in specifics, rather than in number or magnitude, from the changes advocated…

Image

While President Barack Obama has, in one sense, tipped his hand by saying that he wants judges with "empathy" for certain groups,…

Image

Most Americans living below the official poverty line own a car or truck - and government entitlement programs seldom provide cars and…

Image

The government has brought on the housing problem, partly by these very low interest rates, which encouraged many people to go way…

Image

“A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence -- often the sole evidence offered -- of "inadequate" nongovernment institutions, whose "inability" to…

Image

High tax rates in the upper income brackets allow politicians to win votes with class warfare rhetoric, painting their opponents as defenders…

Image

After political crusades for 'affordable housing' ended up ruining the housing market and much of the economy with it, many of the…

Image

“No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution…

Image

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

Image

Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from.

Image

It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.

Image

Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.

Image

No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.

Image

Government's power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us.

Image

Anyone who does not understand the utter cynicism of politics does not understand politics.

Image

The government is neither a monolith nor simply the public interest personified.

Image

Other authors on Politics

More by Thomas Sowell

The vision of the left, full of envy and resentment, takes its worst toll on those at the bottom - whether black or white…

There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten…

“In 1962, Democratic President John F. Kennedy, like both Democratic and Republican Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury in earlier years, pointed out that “it…

Ideological bigotry has become the norm on even our most prestigious campuses, where students can go for years without reading or hearing anything that…

Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.

“One third of all Scots in the mid-nineteenth century moved from one county to another”

The difference is that we have the hardest and most painful evidence that there was a Holocaust. But, for the global warming scenario that…

“Just as price fluctuations allocate scarce resources which have alternative uses, price controls which limit those fluctuations reduce the incentives for individuals to limit…

The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that…

Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it,…

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

What 'eminent domain' laws mean in practice is that politicians have a right to seize your property and turn it over to someone else,…

“those parts of the British Isles without the advantage of coal deposits or ports, industrialization was as handicapped as in other countries.”

The whole idea of equal justice under law is completely incompatible with the idea of judges deciding cases according to "empathy".