The Words of Thomas Sowell

Increasing numbers of educators and the intelligentsia seem to have devoted themselves to undermining or destroying a sense of personal responsibility and making society responsible instead.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010)

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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.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), § Random Thoughts

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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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Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as ‘science.’

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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Many colleges claim that they develop 'leaders.' All too often, that means turning out graduates who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do. There are already too many people like that, and they are a menace to everyone else's freedom.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010), p. 335

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

— The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (1995)

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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.

— Ever Wonder Why? And Other Controversial Essays (2006)

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Nothing is inevitable until it happens.

— Uncommon Knowledge: Dismantling America (Robinson) (2010)

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People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right, especially when events prove you right while proving them wrong.

— Is Reality Optional (1993), § Random Thoughts

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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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I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.

— Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

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Whether blatant or subtle, brainwashing has become a major, time-consuming activity in American education at all levels. Some zealots have not hesitated to use the traditional brain-washing technique of emotional trauma in the classroom to soften up children for their message. Gruesome and graphic movies on nuclear war, for example, have reduced some school children to tears—after which the teacher makes a pitch for whatever movement claims to reduce such dangers. Another technique is the ambush shock: A seventh-grade teacher in Manhattan, for example, innocently asked her students to discuss their future plans—after which she said: ‘Haven’t any of you realized that in this world with nuclear weapons no one in this class will be alive in the year 2000?’

— Inside American Education (1993), Ch. 1

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In an increasingly global economy, Europeans and Americans might be very hesitant to buy telecommunications equipment made halfway around the world in South Korea. But, once the Samsung brand acquired a track record, people in Berlin or Chicago would just as soon buy Samsung products as buy competing products manufactured down the street. Asian companies in general have only in relatively recent history begun investing much time and money in making their brand names widely known, and still they spend less on this than other multinational companies. However, brand names like Toyota, Honda, and Nikon are recognized around the world, and the Cathay Pacific airline and the Shangri-La hotel chain are also becoming better known internationally. Brand names are not guarantees. But they do reduce the range of uncertainty. If a hotel sign says Ritz-Carlton, chances are you will not have to worry about whether the bed sheets in your room were changed since the last person slept there. Even if you stop at a dingy and run-down little store in a strange town, you are not afraid to drink a soda they sell you, if it is a bottle or can of Coca-Cola or Seven Up. Imagine, however, if the owner of this unsavory little place mixed you a soda at his own soda fountain. Would you have the same confidence in drinking it?

— Basic Economics (2000), p. 1043-1044

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Continuing transactions between buyer and seller make sense only if value is subjective, each getting what is worth more subjectively. Economic transactions are not a zero-sum process, where one person loses whatever the other person gains.

— Basic Economics (2000)

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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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Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to “change the United States of America,” the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010), p. 6

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There are no solutions. There are trade-offs.

— Uncommon Knowledge: Intellectuals and Society, Revisited (Robinson) (2012)

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Why anyone would think that criminals who disobey other laws, including laws against murder, would obey gun control laws is a mystery.

— The 'Gun Control' Farce: Part II (2015)

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Multiculturalism, like the caste system, tends to freeze people where the accident of birth has placed them. Unlike the caste system, multiculturalism holds out the prospect that, all cultures being equal, one's life chances should be the same— and that it is society's fault if these chances are not the same.

— Intellectuals and Race (2013)

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Libertarians seem to have this atomistic view of the world, which I think is completely unrealistic, because not only in my life, but in the lives of people around me, the surroundings make a huge difference.

— The Rubin Report Interview with Thomas Sowell (2018)

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