The Words of Thomas Sowell

Let the media discover that any of the sins that have plagued the human race for thousands of years still exist in the United States, and it becomes a special condemnation of American society. The morally anointed are constantly outraged that we have not obliterated racism, poverty, or disease. It would be fascinating to know who has—and how. But a look around the world shows that our problems in these areas are like a sprained ankle compared to cancer.

— Compassion Versus Guilt and other Essays (1985), p. 225

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Europe is belatedely discovering how unbelievably stupid it was to import millions of people from cultures that despise Western values and which often promote hatred toward the people who have let them in.

— Anti-Trust Law and Lawlessness (2015)

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Nothing is inevitable until it happens.

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

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When only two percent of immigrants from Japan to the United States go on welfare, while 46 percent of the immigrants from Laos do, there is no single pattern that applies to all immigrants. Everything depends on which immigrants you are talking about and which periods of history.

— Basic Economics (2000)

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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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One of the most remarkable feats of those with the vision of the anointed has been the maintenance of their reputations in the face of repeated predictions that proved to be wrong by miles.

— The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (1995), Ch. 4

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The engineer is judged by the end product: if he builds a building that collapses, he's ruined. Conversely, if an intellectual who is brilliant has an idea for rearranging society and it ends in disaster, he pays no price at all.

— Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society (2009)

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The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

— Controversial Essays (2002), p. 318

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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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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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No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has if you count the tail as a leg. When they answered "five," Lincoln told them that the answer was four. The fact that you called the tail a leg did not make it a leg.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010)

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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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Propagandists in the classroom are a luxury that the poor can afford least of all. While a mastery of mathematics and English can be a ticket out of poverty, a highly cultivated sense of grievance and resentment is not.

— Charter Schools and Their Enemies (2020)

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If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy.

— Supreme Hypocrisy (2016)

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Historians of the future will have a hard time figuring out how so many organized groups of strident jackasses succeeded in leading us around by the nose and morally intimidating the majority into silence.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), p. 399

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Life does not ask us what we want. It presents us with options."

— Basic Economics (2000), p. 23

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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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The human race began in poverty, so there is no mysterious explanation as to why some people are poor. The question is, why have some people gotten prosperous, and in particular why have some gotten prosperous to a greater degree than others.

— Thomas Sowell on the second edition of Intellectuals and Society

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You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down.

— Jewish World Review Column (2001)

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