The Words of Thomas Sowell

Those who want to see quality education remain available to youngsters in low-income minority neighborhoods must raise the question, again and again, when various policies and practices are proposed: 'How is this going to affect the education of children?' Surprisingly large proportion of policies and practices cannot answer that question.

— Charter Schools and Their Enemies (2020)

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It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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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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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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Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010)

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Blaming others for anything in which blacks lag has become standard operating procedure among white liberals. If blacks do not pass bar exams or medical board tests as often as whites or Asians, then that shows that something is wrong with those tests, as far as many white liberals are concerned.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), p. 52-53

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There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010)

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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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Intellectuals have no interest in what creates wealth and what inhibits the creation of wealth. They are very concerned about the distribution of it, but they act as if wealth just exists somehow, like manna from heaven. It's only a question of how we split it up.

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

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Everyone hated the idea of being a slave but few had any qualms about enslaving others. Slavery was just not an issue, not even among intellectuals, much less among political leaders, until the 18th century – and then it was an issue only in Western civilization. Among those who turned against slavery in the 18th century were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other American leaders. You could research all of the 18th century Africa or Asia or the Middle East without finding any comparable rejection of slavery there. But who is singled out for scathing criticism today? American leaders of the 18th century.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), § TWISTED HISTORY

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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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One of the reasons it has taken so long for some people to finally see through Barack Obama is that people do not like to admit, even to themselves, that they have been played for fools by a slick-talking politician.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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The illusion that you can take in large numbers of people from a fundamentally different culture, without jeopardizing your own culture — and everything that depends on it — should have been dispelled by many counterproductive social consequences in Europe, even aside from the fatal dangers of terrorists.

— Obama’s speech showcases arrogant delusions (2015)

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I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

— Who Is Racist? (2013)

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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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If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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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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Thousands of free blacks owned slaves in the antebellum South. And, years after the Emancipation Proclamation in the United States, whites as well as blacks were still being bought and sold as slaves in North Africa and the Middle East.

— Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999), § THE SLAVERY CARD

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The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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Libertarians seem to have this atomistic view of the world, which I think is completely unrealistic, because not only in my life, but in the lives of people around me, the surroundings make a huge difference.

— The Rubin Report Interview with Thomas Sowell (2018)

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