The Words of Thomas Sowell

'Equality' is one of the crucial far-fetched ideas of our time. From the soapbox demagogue to the highest court in the land, statistical disparities in outcomes have been treated as virtual proof that somebody was treated unfairly. Apparently, there is no way that they could have performed differently, because of the implicit assumption of equality.

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

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In other words, when people choose their occupations according to what the public wants and is willing to pay for. that is ‘greed,’ but when the public is forced to pay for what the anointed want done, that is ‘public service.’

— The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (1995), Ch. 7

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People in minimum wage jobs do not stay at the minimum wage permanently. Their pay increases as they accumulate experience and develop skills. It increases an average of 30 percent in just their first year of employment, according to the Cato Institute study. Other studies show that low-income people become average-income people in a few years and high-income people later in life. All of this depends on their having a job in the first place, however. But the living wage kills jobs.

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

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More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.

— The Real History of Slavery (2004)

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Socialists have a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they know, wealth just exists somehow, and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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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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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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How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice'.

— The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999)

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The dirty little secret of liberal politics is that it is not about the poor or "social justice" but is about the political careers and moral exaltation of liberals themselves. The actual consequences of liberal policies on the poor or others seldom receives anything like the amount of attention given to promoting these policies and demonizing the critics of these politics.

— Random Thoughts (2012)

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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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As imposed wage rates rise, so do job qualifications, so that less skilled or less experienced workers become 'unemployable.' Think about it. Every one of us would be 'unemployable' if our pay rates were raised high enough.

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

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There is no greater indictment of judges than the fact that honest people are afraid to go into court, while criminals swagger out its revolving doors.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)

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Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals.

— The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999), p. 184

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Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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There are no solutions. There are trade-offs.

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

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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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The road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees.

— Uncommon Knowledge - Thomas Sowell on the second edition of Intellectuals and Society (2012)

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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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The soaring crime rates that followed the liberal nostrums of the 1960s have produced no change of mind. Liberals are often wrong but never in doubt. They are still blaming social conditions, “society,” America. It will never occur to them to blame themselves.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), § PASSING IN REVIEW

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