The Words of Thomas Sowell

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 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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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 welfare state is the greatest confidence racket of all time. The government takes your money in taxes and then turns around and spends some of it to give you things. For this, you feel dependent on them, when in fact they are dependent on you.”

— Controversial Essays (2002), p. 306

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As long as the school has a captive audience and ironclad tenure, they're gonna do what they wanna do, no matter what the public wants, no matter what the parents want, no matter what the taxpayers want, and no matter what the employers want.

— WAMU: Inside American Education (Diane Rehm radio) (Rehm) (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 endlessly repeated argument that most Americans are the descendants of immigrants ignores the fact that most Americans are NOT the descendants of ILLEGAL immigrants.

— Immigration and Illegal Immigration (2006)

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Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan’s homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity – or does the very word 'Balkanization' remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times?

— Is Diversity Our Strength? (2016)

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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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Stupid people can create problems, but it often takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.

— Uncommon Knowledge: Social Justice Fallacies (Robinson) (2023)

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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?

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010), p. 238

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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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One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed-up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience.

— Cheering Immaturity (2010)

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Many issues are misconstrued, not because they are too complex for most people to understand, but because a mundane explanation is far less emotionally satisfying than an explanation which produces villains to hate and heroes to exalt.

— Intellectuals and Society (2009), § The Dramatic

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What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture—and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

— Ever Wonder Why? And Other Controversial Essays (2006), p. 456

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The fundamental difference between decision-makers in the market and decision-makers in government is that the former are subject to continuous and consequential feedback which can force them to adjust to what others prefer and are willing to pay for, while those who make decisions in the political arena face no such inescapable feedback to force them to adjust to the reality of other people’s desires and preferences.

— Intellectuals and Society (2009)

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People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right, especially when events prove you right while proving them wrong.

— Is Reality Optional (1993), § Random Thoughts

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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.

— Some random thoughts on the right, the left, Mad and more (2008)

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Intolerance may not promote progress but it can promote survival. An intolerant Islamic world may outlast the Western world that seems ready to tolerate anything, including the undermining of its own fundamental values and threats to its continued existence.

— Random Thoughts (2001)

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I've been noticing that whenever there's a great disaster, there always seems to be a Harvard man in the middle of it.

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

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