The Words of Thomas Sowell

If you don’t believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children.

— Controversial Essays (2002), p. 321

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Whites walk on eggshells for fear of being called racists, while many blacks are preoccupied with protecting the image of black students, rather than protecting their future by telling the blunt truth. It is understandable that some people are concerned about image, about what in private life might be expressed as: “What will the neighbors think?” But, when your children are dying, you don’t worry about what the neighbors think.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), p. 245

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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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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 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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If you’re going to have reparations for slavery, it’s going to be the greatest transfer of wealth back and forth, because the number of Whites who were enslaved in North Africa by the Barbary Pirates exceeded the number of Africans enslaved in the United States.

— Maverick: Jason Riley On The Life And Times Of Thomas Sowell (2020)

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Continuing transactions between buyer and seller make sense only if value is subjective, each getting what is worth more subjectively. Economic transactions are not a zero-sum process, where one person loses whatever the other person gains.

— Basic Economics (2000)

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Our tax system penalizes those who are producing wealth in order to subsidize those who are only consuming it.

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

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Envy used to be just a human failing, but today it is a major industry. Politicians, journalists and academics are all part of that industry, which some call ‘social justice.’

— Hard Times for Envy (2003)

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There are people who can neither find happiness in their own lives nor permit those around them to be happy. The best you can do is get such people out of your life.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), § Random Thoughts

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You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding until maturity.

— The Fallacy of Redistribution (2012)

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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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While slavery was common to all civilizations, as well as to peoples considered uncivilized, only one civilization developed a moral revulsion against it, very late in its history—Western civilization.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005)

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Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

— Knowledge and Decisions (1980)

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There are people who will not stop until they get stopped — and much of the media, the political classes and the cultural elites of the West cannot bring themselves to even criticize, much less stop, the dangers or degeneracy among groups viewed sympathetically as underdogs.

— Riots in France (2005)

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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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Envy plus rhetoric equals 'social justice'.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)

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Most people on the right have no problem understanding people on the left because many, if not most, were on the left themselves when they were younger. But many, if not most, people on the left find it inexplicable how any decent and intelligent person could be on the right.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.

— Economic Facts and Fallacies (2008)

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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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