The Words of Thomas Sowell

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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It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.

— The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (1995), p. 136

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One of the reasons it has taken so long for some people to finally see through Barack Obama is that people do not like to admit, even to themselves, that they have been played for fools by a slick-talking politician.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state

— Liberalism Versus Blacks (2013)

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Those who want to see quality education remain available to youngsters in low-income minority neighborhoods must raise the question, again and again, when various policies and practices are proposed: 'How is this going to affect the education of children?' Surprisingly large proportion of policies and practices cannot answer that question.

— Charter Schools and Their Enemies (2020)

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You generate political support by creating a ‘crisis.’ Since all human situations have some negative features, nothing is easier than to find something to complain of and to call it a crisis.

— Economic vs Political Decision Making (1993)

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If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.

— Economic Facts and Fallacies (2008)

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Since wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty, you might think that the left would be as obsessed with the creation of wealth as they are with the redistribution of wealth. But you would be wrong.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010)

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Virtually everybody is worse off than somebody else, if only in one dimension, so there are nearly unlimited opportunities to pander to people's sense of injustice, victimhood, and entitlement.

— Hard Times for Envy (2003)

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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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Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated. Darwinian adaptation to environment applies not only to nature but also to society. Just as you don’t find eagles living in the ocean or fish living on mountain tops, so you don’t find leftists concentrated where their ideas have to stand the test of performance.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)

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That people on the political left have a certain set of opinions… is not surprising. What is surprising, however, is how often the opinions of those on the left are accompanied by hostility and even hatred.

— The Anger Of The Left (2007)

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The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer—and they don't want explanations that fail to give them that.

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

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The idealism of the Left is a very selfish one. In their war against 'the rich' and Big Business, they don't care how much collateral damage there is to workers who end up unemployed.

— Taxes and Politics (2011)

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No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk. What do the poor most need? They need to stop being poor. And how can that be done, on a mass scale, except by an economy that creates vastly more wealth? Yet the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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One of the bittersweet things about growing old is realizing how mistaken you were when you were young. As a young political leftist, I saw the left as the voice of the common man. Nothing could be further from the truth.

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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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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One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed-up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience.

— Cheering Immaturity (2010)

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