The Words of Thomas Sowell

Yes. Some years ago, the politicians in Maryland decided they were going to raise more revenue by increasing the taxes on people who had an income of a million dollars a year or more. But after they did this, the number of people with incomes of a million dollars or more in Maryland went down. Because rich people were not chess pieces, they moved out of Maryland. Instead of getting $100 million in new tax revenue like they predicted, Maryland got $200 million less in revenue.

— Thomas Sowell on Social Justice Fallacies: Racial Fallacies (2024)

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White liberals, instead of comparing what has happened to the black family since the liberal welfare state policies of the 1960s were put into practice, compare black families to white families and conclude that the higher rates of broken homes and unwed motherhood among blacks are due to “a legacy of slavery.” But why the large-scale disintegration of the black family should have begun a hundred years after slavery is left unexplained. Whatever the situation of the black family relative to the white family, in the past or the present, it is clear that broken homes were far more common among blacks at the end of the twentieth century than they were in the middle of that century or at the beginning of that century —even though blacks at the beginning of the twentieth century were just one generation out of slavery. The widespread and casual abandonment of their children, and of the women who bore them, by black fathers in the ghettos of the late twentieth century was in fact a painfully ironic contrast with what had happened in the immediate aftermath of slavery a hundred years earlier, when observers in the South reported desperate efforts of freed blacks to find family members who had been separated from them during the era of slavery.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), p. 34-35

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You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding until maturity.

— The Fallacy of Redistribution (2012)

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We do not have a choice whether or not to discuss history. History has always been invoked in contemporary controversies. The only choice is between discussing what actually happened in the past and discussing notions projected into the past for present purposes. History is the memory of the human race. For an individual to wake up some morning with no memory would be devastating.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), p. 276

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Historians of the future, when they look back on our times, may be completely baffled when trying to understand how Western civilization welcomed vast numbers of people hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization, people who had been taught that they have a right to kill those who do not share their beliefs.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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Slavery was not confined by race. It was not defined or created by race. It existed for thousands of years. A history professor once had a student come up to him and ask, ‘When did slavery begin?’ The real question is: when did freedom begin? Slavery existed as long as we have records. From archaeological findings, we know that people were enslaving other people before they could read or write. It has always existed and has existed all over the world. The number of White people enslaved by pirates in North Africa was greater than the number of Africans brought to the United States. And yet, that’s not even mentioned.

— C-SPAN Interview

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What was peculiar about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evil, not only in Western societies but also in other societies subject to Western control or influence. This was possible only because the anti-slavery movement coincided with an era in which Western power and hegemony were at their zenith, so that it was essentially European imperialism which ended slavery. This idea might seem shocking, not because it does not fit the facts, but because it does not fit the prevailing vision of our time.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), p. 134-135

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It is a classic notion on the left in general, and of environmentalist zealots in particular, that no one can disagree with them unless they are either uninformed or dishonest.

— Global Hot Air: Part II (2007)

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Slavery existed all over the world for thousands of years among all sorts of people, as far back as the history of the human species goes. It’s one of many evils that the Left tries to localize, when in fact it is a universal evil.

— Video Interview

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Journalists cannot serve two masters. To the extent that they take on the task of suppressing information or biting their tongue for the sake of some political agenda, they are betraying the trust of the public and corrupting their own profession.

— The Media and Politics (2008)

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The arguments against charter schools are so phony that anyone with a decent education should be able to see right through them. Unfortunately, the very failure of many traditional public schools to provide a decent education enables their defenders to get away with arguments that could not survive any serious analysis.

— Moral Bankruptcy (2018)

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Intellectuals give people who have the handicap of poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood.

— Intellectuals and Society (2009)

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Europe is belatedely discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.

— Anti-Trust Law and Lawlessness (2015)

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One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again. Do we need to keep repeating the same mistakes forever?

— Jewish World Review Column by Thomas Sowell (2001)

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Envy used to be just a human failing, but today it is a major industry. Politicians, journalists and academics are all part of that industry, which some call ‘social justice.’

— Hard Times for Envy (2003)

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Those who are constantly looking for the 'root causes' of poverty, of crime, and of other national and international problems, act as if prosperity and law-abiding behavior are so natural that it is their absence which has to be explained. But a casual glance around the world today, or back through history, would dispel any notion that good things just happen naturally, much less inevitably.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), § Every Wonder Why?

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The fundamental difference between decision-makers in the market and decision-makers in government is that the former are subject to continuous and consequential feedback which can force them to adjust to what others prefer and are willing to pay for, while those who make decisions in the political arena face no such inescapable feedback to force them to adjust to the reality of other people’s desires and preferences.

— Intellectuals and Society (2009)

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The assumption that spending more of the taxpayers' money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse.

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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If you’re going to have reparations for slavery, it’s going to be the greatest transfer of wealth back and forth, because the number of Whites who were enslaved in North Africa by the Barbary Pirates exceeded the number of Africans enslaved in the United States.

— Maverick: Jason Riley On The Life And Times Of Thomas Sowell (2020)

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Propagandists in the classroom are a luxury that the poor can afford least of all. While a mastery of mathematics and English can be a ticket out of poverty, a highly cultivated sense of grievance and resentment is not.

— Charter Schools and Their Enemies (2020)

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