The Words of Thomas Sowell

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, or who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children. Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn’t know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House? Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government—people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America’s influence in the world.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010), p. 6-7

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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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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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As of 1948, during this period of no effective minimum wage law, the unemployment rates of both black and white teenagers were just a fraction of what they would become in later years, as minimum wage rates began rising in the 1950s to catch up, and then keep up, with inflation in later years.

— Discrimination and Disparities (2018)

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Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.

— Compassion Versus Guilt and other Essays (1985)

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Because of the neglect of history in our educational system, most people have no idea how many of the great American fortunes were created by people who were born and raised in worse poverty than the average welfare-recipient today.

— Controversial Essays (2002), p. 302

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The fundamental problem of the political Left seems to be that the real world does not fit their preconceptions. Therefore, they see the real world as what is wrong and what needs to be changed, since apparently their preconceptions cannot be wrong.

— The Mindset of the Left: Part III (2013)

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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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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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People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)

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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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The human race began in poverty, so there's no mysterious explanation as to why some people are poor. The question is, why have some people gotten prosperous? Poverty is not a mystery to be solved by intellectuals.

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

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No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce. On the contrary, the growth of a large parasitic class marked the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the collapse of Spain from the heights of its golden age.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), § POWER TO THE PARASITES

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Slavery has existed all over the planet for thousands of years, with black, white, yellow and other races being both slaves and enslavers. Does that mean that everybody ought to apologize to everybody else for what their ancestors did?

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010), p. 238

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Liberals try to show their concern for the poor by raising the level of minimum wage laws. Yet they show no interest in hard evidence that minimum wage laws create disastrous levels of unemployment among young blacks in this country.

— Liberalism Versus Blacks (2013)

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A pro-black stance by white intellectuals enhances the latter's moral standing and self-esteem, whether or not the particular manifestation of that stance helps or harms blacks on net balance.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005)

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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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Subjecting whole populations to the fancies of intellectuals and politicians has repeatedly proved deadly. That lesson has been written in blood across the history of the twentieth century.

— The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999)

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Evidence and compelling logic is an enemy of dogmas, and one dealt with as an enemy by small but growing numbers of modern intellectuals.

— Intellectuals and Society (2009)

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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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