The 50 Best Thomas Sowell Quotes

Thomas Sowell is one of the greatest minds of the last century and he could perhaps be considered to be the most brilliant living intellectual on the planet. Of course, Sowell himself would probably reject the description of himself as an intellectual, but he is what an intellectual SHOULD BE.

He’s brilliant, wise, and has a commanding knowledge of world history, culture, and human behavior. If you’re not familiar with Thomas Sowell, as you read these quotes, you will begin to understand why so many conservatives speak so highly of him.

50) “The feeling that the government should ‘do something’ has seldom been based on a comparison of what actually happens when government does and when it does not ‘do something.’”

49) “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 fail to give them that.”

48) "Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups.”

47) “It is bad enough that so many people believe things without any evidence. What is worse is that some people have no conception of evidence and regard facts as just someone else’s opinion.”

46) “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.”

45) “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?”

44) “We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did, but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past.”

43) “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.”

42) “Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world.”

41) “Anyone who wants reparations based on history will have to gerrymander history very carefully. Otherwise, practically everybody would owe reparations to practically everybody else.”

40) “Experience trumps brilliance.”

39) “It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”

38) “Too much of what is called ‘education’ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.”

37) “What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.”

36) “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.”

35) “When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.”

34) “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.”

33) “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.”

32) “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.”

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

30) “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.”

29) “Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of "diversity" that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen — written in blood — from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to the Philippines. It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word.”

28) “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”

27) “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.”

26) “There are three questions that would destroy most of the arguments on the left: 1. Compared to what? 2. At what cost? 3. What hard evidence do you have? There are very few ideas on the left that can pass all three of those kinds of things.”

25) “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.”

24) “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.”

23) “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.”

22) “It is self-destructive for any society to create a situation where a baby who is born into the world today automatically has pre-existing grievances against another baby born at the same time, because of what their ancestors did centuries ago. It is hard enough to solve our own problems, without trying to solve our ancestors’ problems.”

21) “Various mental tests or scholastic tests have been criticized as unfair because different groups perform very differently on such tests. But one reply to critics summarized the issue succinctly: “The tests are not unfair. Life is unfair and the tests measure the results.”

20) “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.”

19) “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.”

18) “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

17) “One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans – anything except reason.”

16) “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.”

15) “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.”

14) “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.”

13) “No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.”

12) “The only reward for putting up with craziness is more craziness.”

11) “If there is no equality of outcomes among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected—or assumed—when conditions are not nearly so comparable?”

10) “Civilization has been aptly called a ‘thin crust over a volcano.’ (Liberals) are constantly picking at that crust.”

9) “The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other (liberals) 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?”

8) “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.”

7) “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.”

6) “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.”

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

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) “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.”

2) “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.”

1) “There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.”

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