Thomas Sowell Quotes

374 quotes in 4387 categories

• When you start off by telling those who disagree with you that they are not merely in error but in sin, how much of a…
• Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.
• There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims.
• Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes
• Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and…
• One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by…
• If you have a right to respect, that means other people don't have a right to their own opinions.
• Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.
• Our fate is matched by the total freedom we have to react to our fate. It is as if we were dealt a hand of…
• Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could…
• Sports are the reason I am out of shape. I watch them all on TV.
• Freedom... refer[s] to a social relationship among people-namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision…
• Why the transfer of decisions from those with personal experience and a stake in the outcome to those with neither can be expected to lead…
• 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?"
• 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…
• 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…
• We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for…
• No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When…
• 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…
• Capitalism is not an 'ism.' It is closer to being the opposite of an 'ism,' because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to…

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