The Words of Thomas Sowell

If it were possible to enforce a ban on lying, a ghastly silence would fall over the city of Washington.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)

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The most important decision is always who makes the decision.

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

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Those who are primarily concerned about the well-being of the poor are likely to discover over time that much of the agenda of the left does not really do much good for the poor, and some of that agenda—environmental extremism, for example—actually makes the poor worse off.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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Whether blatant or subtle, brainwashing has become a major, time-consuming activity in American education at all levels. Some zealots have not hesitated to use the traditional brain-washing technique of emotional trauma in the classroom to soften up children for their message. Gruesome and graphic movies on nuclear war, for example, have reduced some school children to tears—after which the teacher makes a pitch for whatever movement claims to reduce such dangers. Another technique is the ambush shock: A seventh-grade teacher in Manhattan, for example, innocently asked her students to discuss their future plans—after which she said: ‘Haven’t any of you realized that in this world with nuclear weapons no one in this class will be alive in the year 2000?’

— Inside American Education (1993), Ch. 1

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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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Anyone who wants reparations based on history will have to gerrymander history very carefully. Otherwise, practically everybody would owe reparations to practically everybody else.

— The Benfits And Hypocrisy Of Playing The Slavery Card (1995)

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When you want to help someone, you'll tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you'll tell them what they want to hear.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)

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We all enter the world knowing nothing but, by the time we are teenagers, we know it all. Sometimes it is decades later before we know enough to realize how little we know."

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010), p. 334

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The number of Whites who were enslaved in North Africa by the Barbary pirates exceeded the number of Africans enslaved in the United States and in the American colonies before that put together. But nobody is going to North Africa to ask for reparations.

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

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The ideal of freedom behind the American Revolution had its effect in freeing thousands of people from slavery in the newly formed United States, something that was happening nowhere else in the world at that time. To call slavery “America’s original sin” is to turn reality upside down.

— Wealth, Poverty and Politics (2015), Ch. 15

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The ideas of the political left are not bad ideas. They just don't apply to human beings. That is why the left has always had to try to change human nature, whether through 're-education' camps 'brainwashing' in China, creating a "Soviet Man" in the U.S.S.R., or 'values clarification' programs in American schools.

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

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The biggest difference between the left and right today, when it comes to racial issues, is that liberals tend to take the side of those blacks who are doing the wrong things — hoodlums the left depicts as martyrs, while the right defends those blacks more likely to be the victims of those hoodlums.

— Black and White, Left and Right (2016), 22

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Intellectuals as a class are dependent upon the backing of political power to impose their visions on the underlying population.

— Knowledge and Decisions (1980)

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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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The great ideological divide is between those who believe that theories should be adjusted to reality and those who believe that reality must be adjusted to fit their theories. Many of the horrors of the 20th century were created by the latter. And such people are still with us, in many movements.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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It is a classic notion on the left in general, and of environmentalist zealots in particular, that no one can disagree with them unless they are either uninformed or dishonest.

— Global Hot Air: Part II (2007)

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We do not have a choice whether or not to discuss history. History has always been invoked in contemporary controversies. The only choice is between discussing what actually happened in the past and discussing notions projected into the past for present purposes. History is the memory of the human race. For an individual to wake up some morning with no memory would be devastating.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), p. 276

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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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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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The politically correct party line on minimum wages is that people cannot afford to raise their families on low pay, so the government has to force employers to provide "a living wage" for families. But the vast majority of people making minimum wages are youngsters just beginning their careers.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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