110+ Thomas Sowell Quotes On Truth, Intellectuals And Liberals

Thomas Sowell was an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. He was an advocate of laissez-faire economics and wrote extensively on the economics of race and education. His works covered a variety of topics, including education, affirmative action, race and culture, economics, and politics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Thomas Sowell on truth, intellectuals, liberals.

Top 10 Thomas Sowell Quotes

1. It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
2. 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.
3. Racism is not dead, but it is on life support -- kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists'
4. If you believe in equal rights, then what do “women’s rights,” “gay rights,” etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.
5. It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
6. Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected.
7. The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
8. Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.
9. Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help.
10. I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.

Thomas Sowell Short Quotes

• The real minimum wage is zero.
• It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.
• Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
• If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
• There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
• What exactly is your 'fair share' of what 'someone else' has worked for?
• The welfare state has always been judged by its good intentions, rather than its bad results.
• I'm so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
• Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
• Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Truth

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously. — Thomas Sowell

The only thing better than "hands-on" experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone. — Thomas Sowell

In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media. — Thomas Sowell

All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done. — Thomas Sowell

People have a vested interest in promoting one set of polices rather than finding out what the truth is. — Thomas Sowell

People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect? — Thomas Sowell

Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power. — Thomas Sowell

The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing their votes. — Thomas Sowell

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. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Intellectuals

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. — Thomas Sowell

Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God. — Thomas Sowell

Because many of us make mistakes that can have bad consequences, some intellectuals believe that it is the role of government to intervene and make some of our decisions for us. From what galaxy government is going to hire creatures who do not make mistakes is a question they leave unanswered. — Thomas Sowell

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite. — Thomas Sowell

The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool. — Thomas Sowell

Someone once defined a social problem as a situation in which the real world differs from the theories of intellectuals. To the intelligentsia, it follows, as the night follows the day, that it is the real world that is wrong and which needs to change. — Thomas Sowell

Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along. — Thomas Sowell

What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less. — Thomas Sowell

The stricter standards and independent, often conclusive, evidence in the physical sciences cannot be generalized to intellectual activity as a whole, even though the aura of scientific processes and results is often appropriated by other intellectuals. — Thomas Sowell

Clearly, only very unequal intellectual and moral standing could justify having equality imposed, whether the people want it or not, as Dworkin suggests, and only very unequal power would make it possible. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Liberals

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 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today. — Thomas Sowell

I am so old that I can remember when liberals were liberal - instead of being intolerant of anything and anybody that is not politically correct. — Thomas Sowell

The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state. — Thomas Sowell

By the end of the 20th century, "liberals" had again discredited themselves, to the point where they went back to calling themselves "progressives" to escape their past, much as people do when they declare bankruptcy. — Thomas Sowell

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face. — Thomas Sowell

Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing . . .social pathology in today's ghettos to 'a legacy of slavery' even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today. — Thomas Sowell

How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro. — Thomas Sowell

Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side — Thomas Sowell

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected. — Thomas Sowell

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Education

Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality. — Thomas Sowell

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination. — Thomas Sowell

Just as any moron can destroy a priceless Ming vase, so the shallow and ill-educated people who run our schools can undermine and destroy from within a great civilization that took centuries of dedicated effort to create and maintain. — Thomas Sowell

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other 'studies' was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these 'studies' are about propaganda rather than serious education. — Thomas Sowell

Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity. — Thomas Sowell

The big problem in the long process of dumbing down the schools is that you can reach a point of no return. How are parents who never received a decent education themselves to recognize that their children are not getting a decent education? — Thomas Sowell

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. — Thomas Sowell

Too often what are called "educated" people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years. — Thomas Sowell

Someone once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of our own ignorance. Our schools are depriving millions of students of that kind of knowledge by promoting "self-esteem" and encouraging them to have opinions on things of which they are grossly ignorant, if not misinformed. — Thomas Sowell

Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Politicians

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. — Thomas Sowell

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders. — Thomas Sowell

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves — Thomas Sowell

The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy. — Thomas Sowell

Lofty talk about 'social justice' or 'fairness' boils down to greatly expanded powers for politicians, since those pretty words have no concrete definition. They are a blank check for creating disparities in power that dwarf disparities in income - and are far more dangerous. — Thomas Sowell

Most of the founders of this country had day jobs for years. They were not career politicians. ... We need leaders with experience in the real world, not experience in the phony world of politics. — Thomas Sowell

What makes it possible for politicians to do so many things that are economically counterproductive is that neither the public nor the media know enough of the basics to understand what's wrong with what they're saying. — Thomas Sowell

What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race? — Thomas Sowell

If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both parents working. — Thomas Sowell

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Government

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. — Thomas Sowell

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all. — Thomas Sowell

The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others. — Thomas Sowell

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long. — Thomas Sowell

'Fair' is one of the most dangerous concepts in politics. Since no two people are likely to agree on what is 'fair,' this means that there must be some third party with power - the government - to impose its will. The road to despotism is paved with 'fairness'. — Thomas Sowell

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending. — Thomas Sowell

If sanity ever returns to our society and we stop taking pretentious elites seriously, one of the signs will be that the public will force the removal of those ugly pieces of twisted metal that are called 'art' in front of government buildings. — Thomas Sowell

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. — Thomas Sowell

As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism -- unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom. — Thomas Sowell

[A]ffirmative action in the United States has made blacks. . .who have largely lifted themselves out of poverty, look like people who owe their rise to affirmative action and other government programs. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Diversity

Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a good thing to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns. — Thomas Sowell

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department. — Thomas Sowell

Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Socialism

Morality, like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns- meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can be too moral. — Thomas Sowell

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. — Thomas Sowell

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. — Thomas Sowell

Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves 'progressives.' What arouses them are denunciations of social failures and accusations of wrong-doing. — Thomas Sowell

Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.". — Thomas Sowell

The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn't work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good. — Thomas Sowell

Social Engineering - The art of replacing what works with what sounds good. — Thomas Sowell

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? — Thomas Sowell

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights. — Thomas Sowell

There are no dead-end jobs. There are no dead-end jobs. There are only dead-end people. Our current social philosophy, and the welfare state apparatus based on it, are creating more dead-end people. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About History

One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again. — Thomas Sowell

Against the background of the Obama administration' s negotiating what can turn out to be the most catastrophic international agreement in the nation's history, to complain about protocol is to put questions of etiquette above questions of annihilation. — Thomas Sowell

One undeniable accomplishment of Bill Clinton's presidency was that it kept Jimmy Carter from being the worst U.S. president in history. — Thomas Sowell

Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric. — Thomas Sowell

Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius. — Thomas Sowell

Both history and contemporary data show that countries prosper more when there are stable and dependable rules, under which people can make investments without having to fear unpredictable new government interventions before these investments can pay off. — Thomas Sowell

One of the painfully sobering realizations that come from reading history is the utter incompetence that is possible among leaders of whole nations and empires - and the blind faith that such leaders can nevertheless inspire among the people who are enthralled by their words or their posturing. — Thomas Sowell

Much of the world today, including the United States, is still living in the social, cultural, and political aftermath of Britain's cultural achievements, its industrial revolution, its government of checks and balances, and its conquests around the world. — Thomas Sowell

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. — Thomas Sowell

History is the memory of a nation — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About People

Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole. — Thomas Sowell

You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible. — Thomas Sowell

Most people who read "The Communist Manifesto" probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives, and who nevertheless spoke boldly in the name of "the workers". Thomas Sowell . — Thomas Sowell

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. — Thomas Sowell

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly. — Thomas Sowell

Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic. — Thomas Sowell

Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism. — Thomas Sowell

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings. — Thomas Sowell

When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination. — Thomas Sowell

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. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About World

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. — Thomas Sowell

Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved. — Thomas Sowell

Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. — Thomas Sowell

We need laws written by people who have confronted life in the real world, not in the sheltered world of trust fund recipients of the insulated cocoon of academia. — Thomas Sowell

Those who want to "spread the wealth" almost invariably seek to concentrate the power. It happens too often, and in too many different countries around the world, to be a coincidence. Which is more dangerous, inequalities of wealth or concentrations of power? — Thomas Sowell

Much of what sophisticates loftily refer to as the "complexityof the real world is in fact the inconsistency in their own minds. — Thomas Sowell

Virtually everything that the government does costs more than when the same thing is done in private industry - whether it is building housing, running prisons, collecting garbage, or innumerable other things. Why in the world would we imagine that health care would be the exception? — Thomas Sowell

Benedict Arnold was a war hero, wounded in battle--before he turned against his country. Hitler was likewise a decorated and wounded veteran of the First World War. Being a war hero is not a lifetime...exempt[ion]...from responsibility for what you do thereafter. — Thomas Sowell

American society in recent years has been imitating behavior patterns that have produced negative - and sometimes catastrophic - consequences in many other countries around the world. — Thomas Sowell

American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Left

The vision of the left, full of envy and resentment, takes its worst toll on those at the bottom - whether black or white - who find in that paranoid vision an excuse for counterproductive and ultimately self-destructive attitudes and behavior. — Thomas Sowell

Although the big word on the left is 'compassion,' the big agenda on the left is dependency. — Thomas Sowell

The left's obsession with the high incomes of corporate executives never seems to extend to equally high - or higher - incomes of professional athletes, entertainers, or best-selling authors like Danielle Steel. — Thomas Sowell

Whether as a radical student, a community organizer or a far left politician, Barack Obama's ideology has been based on a vision of the Haves versus the Have Nots. . .Obama's ideology is an ideology of envy, resentment, and payback. — Thomas Sowell

Ideological bigotry has become the norm on even our most prestigious campuses, where students can go for years without reading or hearing anything that challenges the left vision. — Thomas Sowell

The idealism of the left is a very selfish idealism. In their war against 'the rich' and big business, they don't care how much collateral damage there is to workers who end up end up unemployed. — Thomas Sowell

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society. — Thomas Sowell

If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left. — Thomas Sowell

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state. — Thomas Sowell

Contrary to the vision of the left, it was the free market which produced affordable housing - before government intervention made housing unaffordable. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Facts

The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against. — Thomas Sowell

Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned. — Thomas Sowell

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision. — Thomas Sowell

The key fallacy of so called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available. — Thomas Sowell

Relevance is not something you can predict. It is something you discover after the fact. — Thomas Sowell

Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?. — Thomas Sowell

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking. — Thomas Sowell

One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence. — Thomas Sowell

The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them. — Thomas Sowell

Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Quotes About Political

There are few 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. — Thomas Sowell

No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce. — Thomas Sowell

In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities. — Thomas Sowell

Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest. — Thomas Sowell

Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back. — Thomas Sowell

There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse. — Thomas Sowell

One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies. — Thomas Sowell

If politics were like sports, we could ask Israel to trade us Benjamin Netanyahu for Barack Obama. Of course, we would have to throw in trillions of dollars to get Israel to agree to the deal, but it would be money well spent. — Thomas Sowell

It is truly a triumph of rhetoric over reality when people can believe that going into politics is 'public service,' but that producing food, shelter, transportation, or medical care is not. — Thomas Sowell

Cheap medical care is one of the most expensive things there is. So long as politicians can create the illusion of something for nothing, that gets them votes, which is what it is all about, as far as they are concerned. — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell Famous Quotes And Sayings

The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be 'materialistic' and 'greedy' to want to keep what you have earned. But it is 'idealistic' to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself. — Thomas Sowell

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity. — Thomas Sowell

What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice. — Thomas Sowell

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win. — Thomas Sowell

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation? — Thomas Sowell

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites. — Thomas Sowell

Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality. — Thomas Sowell

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers. — Thomas Sowell

Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets. — Thomas Sowell

The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.' — Thomas Sowell

One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain. — Thomas Sowell

There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims. — Thomas Sowell

The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one's own behavior. — Thomas Sowell

In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees. — Thomas Sowell

Perhaps people who are gushing over the Obama Cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under Sharia law. — Thomas Sowell

Hilary Clinton said you know, it takes a village to raise a child and somebody said it takes a village idiot to believe that … it is part of the whole thing of third parties wanting to make decisions for which they pay no price for when they’re wrong. — Thomas Sowell

If you truly believe in the brotherhood of man, then you must believe that blacks are just as capable of being racists as whites are. — Thomas Sowell

Those who automatically say that the social pathology of the ghetto is due to poverty discrimination and the like cannot explain why such pathology was far less prevalent in the 1950s, when poverty and discrimination were worse. But there were not nearly as many grievance mongers and race hustlers then. — Thomas Sowell

Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated - preemptively and unilaterally, if necessary. — Thomas Sowell

Not only is patriotism disdained, the very basis for pride in one's country and culture is systematically undermined in our educational institutions at all levels. The achievements of western civilization are buried in histories that portray every human sin found here as if they were peculiarities of the west. — Thomas Sowell

Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensations for injustices - leading to worsening behavior by the recipients. — Thomas Sowell

We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it. — Thomas Sowell

People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge. — Thomas Sowell

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats. — Thomas Sowell

Everyone may be called "comrade," but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades. — Thomas Sowell

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life. — Thomas Sowell

The poor are the very lifeblood of the left, attracting activists, supporting among the intelligentsia, and - perhaps most important - allowing the left to indulge in self-congratulation as people who 'care.' But, if they really cared, they would want to know what the facts are and what the actual consequences of their various nostrums are. — Thomas Sowell

The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer - and they don't want explanations that do not give them that. — Thomas Sowell

The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people. — Thomas Sowell

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing. — Thomas Sowell

Women can say anything they want to men, or blacks to whites, with impunity. But strong words in the other direction can bring down on students the wrath of the campus thought police - as well as punishments that can extend to suspension or expulsion. — Thomas Sowell

You need only visit campuses where whole departments feature soft courses preaching a sense of victimhood and resentment, and see the consequences in racial and ethnic polarization on campus. — Thomas Sowell

Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened. — Thomas Sowell

The real culprits are those who created a system that makes it dangerous to work and safe to loaf. — Thomas Sowell

Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination. — Thomas Sowell

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them. — Thomas Sowell

We might have been better off if the question of Obama's patriotism had been raised before he was first elected. Never should we ignore so many red flag warnings again. — Thomas Sowell

Life Lessons by Thomas Sowell

1. Thomas Sowell's life lessons emphasize the importance of hard work, self-discipline, and perseverance. He encourages individuals to strive for excellence and to never give up despite the challenges they may face.
2. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding the consequences of one's decisions and taking responsibility for them. He believes that individuals should strive to become better versions of themselves and to never settle for mediocrity.
3. Finally, he encourages individuals to develop a strong sense of self-worth and to be open to learning and growing from their mistakes. He believes that with dedication and determination, anything is possible.