The Words of Thomas Sowell

These people who go around shooting people and calling them fascists are so ignorant they don't even know what the fascists were doing. Charlie Kirk went around talking to people, trying to convince them. Fascists don't do that. Fascists shoot people. So it's the person who kills him, thinking he's a fascist, who is himself the fascist , the opposite of the man he's murdering. And I don't think it's coincidence.

— Uncommon Knowledge: The Price of Bad Ideas (Robinson) (2025)

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But life does not ask us what we want. It presents us with options. Economics is one of the ways of trying to make the most of those options.

— Basic Economics (2000)

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Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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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 endlessly repeated argument that most Americans are the descendants of immigrants ignores the fact that most Americans are NOT the descendants of ILLEGAL immigrants.

— Immigration and Illegal Immigration (2006)

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The secret of the welfare state is you can do almost anything in the short run, juggling money from here to there. But in the long run, the arithmetic can't be ignored, and you're gonna run out of money.

— Uncommon Knowledge: The Trickle-Down Lie (Robinson) (2012)

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Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on 'global warming' predictions that have even less foundation?

— Random Thoughts (1999)

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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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What I think is really tragic is that assertions have been made not only without evidence being offered, but without anyone even asking for evidence. It's as if these are self-evident truths that have been brought down from the mountainside.

— Firing Line: The Economic Lot of Minorities (Buckley) (1981)

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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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People who speak disdainfully of 'menial' jobs probably have no idea how many millionaires and even billionaires began working in such jobs. The political left is so wedded to their assumption that people stay in their 'class' that it would never occur to them to check out the hard facts.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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They talk about immigrants in the abstract, and there are no immigrants in the abstract... We don't have an immigration policy unless we control the border. It doesn't matter what our policy is. If anybody who wants to cross the border can cross, then our policy is just a bunch of words on paper.

— Uncommon Knowledge: Basic Economics (Robinson) (2014)

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When it comes to lifting people out of poverty, redistribution of income has a much poorer track record than the creation of wealth. In some places, such as Zimbabwe today, attempts at a redistribution of wealth have turned out to be a redistribution of poverty. While the creation of wealth may be more effective for enabling millions of people to rise out of poverty, it provides no special role for the political left, no puffed-up importance, no moral superiority. Redistribution is clearly better for the left.

— The Cure for Poverty? Wealth (2006)

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Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.

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

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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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If there is not equality of outcomes among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected—or assumed—when conditions are not nearly so comparable?

— Discrimination and Disparities (2018)

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People with no experience in business, no knowledge of history, and utterly ignorant of economics do not hesitate to leap from high prices to greedy profit-makers. Many of these ignorant people are on nationwide television and some are in Congress.

— Posturing over the price of gas (2006)

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It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

— A Childish Letter (1998)

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Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

— Is Reality Optional (1993), § SOCIAL DETERIORATION

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If you believe in equal rights, then what do 'women's rights,' 'gay rights,' etc. mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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