The Words of Thomas Sowell

The vision of the left, and many conservatives underestimate this, is really a more attractive vision in itself. The only reason for not believing in it is that it doesn't work. If the world were the way the left conceives it to be, it would be a better world than the way the right conceives it to be. It just happens that the world is not that way.

— Free To Choose: Common Sense in a Senseless World (doc) (Riley) (2021)

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The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

— Knowledge and Decisions (1980), p. 79

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Historians of the future, when they look back on our times, may be completely baffled when trying to understand how Western civilization welcomed vast numbers of people hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization, people who had been taught that they have a right to kill those who do not share their beliefs.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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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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Income is not distributed. Newspapers are distributed, Social Security checks are distributed. Income is not distributed. People earn it directly from those to whom they provide some good or service.

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

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If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter. And if you are not informed, then the most patriotic thing you can do on election day is stay home. Otherwise your vote, based on whims or emotions, is playing Russian roulette with the fate of this nation.

— Why Have Elections? (2015)

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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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Politics really involves getting people to vote for you, and people vote for you when they are dependent on you. To the extent that people become self-reliant and can feel they're perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, to that extent do you lose your hold on their votes.

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

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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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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? Or are the only people who are supposed to feel guilty the ones who have money that others want to talk them out of?

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010)

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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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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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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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There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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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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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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It is amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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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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The Fourteenth Amendment provides for equal rights and equal protection of the laws. If you want more than that, then you are no longer talking about rights, but about special privileges.

— Controversial Essays (2002), § MURDER IS MURDER

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Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not god.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010)

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