Thomas Sowell Quotes (77 Quotes)

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.

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.

Civilization is an enormous device for economizing knowledge.

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

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.

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

The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to help.

One of the peculiarities of the American Revolution was that its leaders pinned their hopes on the organization of decision-making units, the structuring of their incentives, and the counterbalancing of the units against one another, rather than on t

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

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.

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

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.

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

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

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.

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.

People used to say, Ignorance is no excuse. Today, ignorance is no problem. After all, you have a right to your own opinion -- and self-esteem to boot.

Whenever a problem is proclaimed in the media there will almost invariably be a solution proposed in politics. Often the solution is worse than the problem.

Love is a four-letter word, but you don't hear in nearly as often as you hear some other four-letter words. It may be a sign of our times that everyone talks openly about sex, but we seem to be embarrassed to talk about love.

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

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

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

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.

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

Physicists have determined that even the most solid and heavy mass of matter we see is mostly empty space. But at the submicroscopic level, specks of matter scattered through a vast emptiness have such incredible density and weight, and are linked to one another by such powerful forces, that together they produce all the properties of concrete, cast iron and solid rock. In much the same way, specks of knowledge are scattered through a vast emptiness of ignorance, and everything depends upon how solid the individual specks of knowledge are, and on how powerfully linked and coordinated they are with one another.

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