The 30 Best Thomas Sowell Quotes
Thomas Sowell is a prolific author and brilliant economist and he is about as good at distilling conservative wisdom into pithy quotes as anyone you will ever read. If you think there’s not enough extraordinary brilliance left in the world, let me
introduce you to Thomas Sowell, one of the greatest minds of our generation….
30. “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny
can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses
it with feeling.”
29. “One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who
have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something,
apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.”
28. “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little
barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”
27. "Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and
highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important.
Some confuse that feeling with idealism."
26. "I wonder what radical feminists make of the fact that it was men who created
the rule of 'women and children first' when it came to rescuing people from lifethreatening
emergencies.”
25. “The word ‘racism’ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything — and
demanding evidence makes you a ‘racist.’”
24. “To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role
of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated
unfairly by ‘society.’”
23. “What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a
wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month and competing
in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are given ‘class’ labels on the
basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not
stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly
changing ‘class’ makes class itself a nebulous concept.”
22. "There is much discussion of the haves and the have-nots, but very little
discussion of the doers and the do-nots, those who contribute and those who
merely take."
21. "It would be hard to think of a more ridiculous way to make decisions than to
transfer those decisions to third parties who pay no price for being wrong. Yet that
is what at least half of the bright ideas of the political left amount to."
20. "When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help
yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. People with careers as ethnic
leaders usually tell their followers what they want to hear."
19. "'We are a nation of immigrants,' we are constantly reminded. We are also a
nation of people with ten fingers and ten toes. Does that mean that anyone who
has ten fingers and ten toes should be welcomed and given American citizenship?"
18. “It is amazing how many people think that the government's role is to give them
what they want by overriding what other people want.”
17. “Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask
for data on what has actually happened when the government did something,
compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.”
16. “Four things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep
prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free
market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2)
Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black
markets.”
15. “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades,
has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
14. “Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions – and
the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in
government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost,
however large.”
13. “Considering how often throughout history even intelligent people have been
proved to be wrong, it is amazing that there are still people who are convinced that
the only reason anyone could possibly say something different from what they
believe is stupidity or dishonesty.”
12. "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?"
11. "For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past,
relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who
faced similar human vicissitudes before."
10. "It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it 'greed' to want to keep what
you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has
earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes."
9. “If you cannot achieve equality of performance among people born to the same
parents and raised under the same roof, how realistic is it to expect to achieve it
across broader and deeper social divisions?”
8. "It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by
attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of
reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having
to bother to deal with facts or logic."
7. “Experience trumps brilliance.”
6. “There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or
stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with
high IQs.”
5. "There are few modest talents so richly rewarded — especially in politics and the
media — as the ability to portray parasites as victims, and portray demands for
preferential treatment as struggles for equal rights."
4. “In short, killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, so
long as the goose does not die before the next election and no one traces the
politicians’ fingerprints on the murder weapon.”
3. ”The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the
anointed that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense.
But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal
to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while
agreeing with everyone else?”
2. “No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are
not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems – of
which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is
number three is far behind.”
1. “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.”
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