The Words of Thomas Sowell

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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People with no experience in business, no knowledge of history, and utterly ignorant of economics do not hesitate to leap from high prices to greedy profit-makers. Many of these ignorant people are on nationwide television and some are in Congress.

— Posturing over the price of gas (2006)

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Entitlement" is not only the opposite of achievement, it undermines incentives to do all the hard work that leads to achievement.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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In the United States, the group hardest hit by minimum wage laws are black male teenagers. Those who refuse to admit that the minimum wage is the reason for high unemployment rates among young blacks blame racism, lack of education and whatever else occurs to them.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010)

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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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Equality of rights does not mean equality of results. I can have all the equal treatment in the world on a golf course and I will not finish within shouting distance of Tiger Woods.

— Affirmative Action and Gay Marriage (2008)

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People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)

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Intellectuals give people who have the handicap of poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood.

— Intellectuals and Society (2009)

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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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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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So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create ‘social justice’ is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom, and all human dignity.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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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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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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In the academic world, diversity means black leftists, white leftists, female leftists, and Hispanic leftists. Demographic diversity conceals ideological conformity.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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The soaring crime rates that followed the liberal nostrums of the 1960s have produced no change of mind. Liberals are often wrong but never in doubt. They are still blaming social conditions, “society,” America. It will never occur to them to blame themselves.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011), § PASSING IN REVIEW

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Western civilization has survived the invasions of Genghis Khan from the East, the Ottoman Empire from the South, and two world wars originating from within. But whether it will survive its own intellectuals is much more doubtful.

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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You might think that the collapse of communism throughout Eastern Europe would be considered a decisive failure for Marxism, but academic Marxists in America are utterly undaunted. Their paychecks and their tenure are unaffected. Their theories continue to flourish in the classrooms and their journals continue to litter the library shelves.

— The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)

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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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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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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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