Thomas Sowell Quotes

374 quotes in 4387 categories

• People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of… All
• Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved… Africa
• The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it… Away Quietly
• If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child… Both
• Liberals love to say things like, "We're just asking everyone to pay their fair share." But government is not about asking. It is about telling.… Anybody
• Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from. Asking
• 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… Basic
• The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity. Activity
• For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact. Equal
• The biggest hypocrites on gun control are those who live in upscale developments with armed security guards - and who want to keep other people… Adding
• The desire to order other people around and make them conform to one own's vision takes many forms. Conform
• An inmate in a Florida prison wrote to agree with me on the availability of guns, saying that a 'criminal can and will get a… Agree
• The difference between a policy and a crusade is that a policy is judged by its results, while a crusade is judged by how good… Crusade
• So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create 'social justice' is giving them… All
• No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own… Behind
• You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth - and that future wealth is less likely… Confiscate
• Any policy is a success by sufficiently low standards and a failure by sufficiently high standards. Any
• Neither your life nor my life, nor the future of this country, will be affected in the slightest by whether Linda Tripp is naughty or… Able
• The difference is that we have the hardest and most painful evidence that there was a Holocaust. But, for the global warming scenario that is… Arbitrarily
• [A]ffirmative action in the United States has made blacks. . .who have largely lifted themselves out of poverty, look like people who owe their rise… Action

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