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Thomas Sowell Quotes

Thomas Sowell is an American economist and social theorist who is currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Sowell was born in North Carolina but grew up in Harlem, New York. He dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. He received a bachelor's degree, graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1958 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago.

Sowell has served on the faculties of several universities, including Cornell University and University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked for think tanks such as the Urban Institute. Since 1980, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He writes from a libertarian conservative perspective, advocating supply-side economics. Sowell has written more than thirty books , and his work has been widely anthologized. He is a National Humanities Medal recipient for innovative scholarship which incorporated history, economics and political science.



Wikipedia  

✵ 30. June 1930
Thomas Sowell photo

Works

Intellectuals and Society
Thomas Sowell: 101   quotes 45   likes

Famous Thomas Sowell Quotes

“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.”

Thomas Sowell

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

“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

“Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.”

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

“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

Thomas Sowell Quotes about people

“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

Source: 1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

“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

Source: Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (2011), p.397

“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

Big Lies in Politics http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/05/22/big_lies_in_politics/page/full, 22 May 2012.
2010s

“Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me.”

Thomas Sowell

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/09/03/random_thoughts?page=full&comments=true, Sep 03, 2007
2000s

“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

Random Thoughts http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell101705.asp, Oct. 17, 2005
2000s

“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

Random Thoughts http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell101705.asp, Oct. 17, 2005
2000s

Thomas Sowell: Trending quotes

“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.”

Thomas Sowell
Feeling , Problem , Thinking , Reading

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”

Thomas Sowell

Source: A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

Thomas Sowell Quotes

“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

Source: 1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

Money

“He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results.”

Thomas Sowell

Source: 2000s, A Personal Odyssey (2000), Ch. 5 : Halls of Ivy
Context: In the summer of 1959, as in the summer of 1957, I worked as a clerk-typist in the headquarters of the U. S. Public Health Service in Washington. The people I worked for were very nice and I grew to like them. One day, a man had a heart attack at around 5 PM, on the sidewalk outside the Public Health Service. He was taken inside to the nurse's room, where he was asked if he was a government employee. If he were, he would have been eligible to be taken to a medical facility there. Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results.

Nature , Waiting

“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.”

Thomas Sowell

Student Loans
1980s–1990s, Is Reality Optional? (1993)
Source: Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays

“Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.”

Thomas Sowell

Bogeyman Economics
1980s–1990s, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987)
Source: Compassion Versus Guilt, and Other Essays: And Other Essays

“Don't you get tired of seeing so many "non-conformists" with the same non-conformist look?”

Thomas Sowell

Source: Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays

“Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.”

Thomas Sowell

"Socialism for the Uninformed" http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2016/05/31/socialism-for-the-uninformed-n2171042, 31 May 2016
2010s

Disappointment

“When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is 'control.' That is what the political left is all about, as you can see by the incessant creation of new restrictions in places where they are strongly entrenched in power, such as San Francisco or New York.”

Thomas Sowell

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/08/26/random_thoughts?page=full&comments=true, 26 August 2008.
2000s

Thinking

“Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance.”

Thomas Sowell

Source: 2000s, A Personal Odyssey (2000), Ch. 5 : Halls of Ivy
Context: In the summer of 1959, as in the summer of 1957, I worked as a clerk-typist in the headquarters of the U. S. Public Health Service in Washington. The people I worked for were very nice and I grew to like them. One day, a man had a heart attack at around 5 PM, on the sidewalk outside the Public Health Service. He was taken inside to the nurse's room, where he was asked if he was a government employee. If he were, he would have been eligible to be taken to a medical facility there. Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results.

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.”

Thomas Sowell

Social Deterioration
1980s–1990s, Is Reality Optional? (1993)

World , Education , History , Failure

“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”

Thomas Sowell

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/05/01/random_thoughts, May 01, 2007
2000s

God

“The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.”

Thomas Sowell

“Intellect is not wisdom.”

Thomas Sowell book Intellectuals and Society

Source: Intellectuals and Society

Wisdom

“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 "universal health care."”

Thomas Sowell

Random Thought
2000s, Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays (2006)
Source: Knowledge And Decisions

People , Health , Thinking , Universe

“Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.”

Thomas Sowell
Life , People , Sense

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

Thomas Sowell

Source: 1980s–1990s, Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 5 : Political Trade-Offs

Freedom

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

Thomas Sowell

Source: The Thomas Sowell Reader, New York: NY, Basic Books (2011) p. 144, Forbes magazine, "The survival of the left" (Sept. 8, 1997)

Failure

“If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.”

Thomas Sowell
Understanding

“Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.”

Thomas Sowell
Reality

“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
People , Parent

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

Thomas Sowell

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

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

Thomas Sowell

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

Life , Death

“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

Source: The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

Sadness , Time

“Civilization is an enormous device for economizing on knowledge.”

Thomas Sowell

Source: 1980s–1990s, Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 1 : The Role of Knowledge

Knowledge

“I'm always embarrassed when people say that I'm courageous. Soldiers are courageous. Policemen are courageous. Firemen are courageous. I just have a thick hide and disregard what silly people say.”

Thomas Sowell

"Live" with Thomas Sowell https://www.aei.org/publication/live-thomas-sowell/, The American Enterprise, September 2004.
2000s

People , Courage

“Key indicators require some specified time span during which they are to be tabulated for purposes of reward or penalty. The time span can vary enormously according to the process and the indicator.”

Thomas Sowell

Source: 1980s–1990s, Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 1 : The Role of Knowledge

Penalty , Time

“It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock.”

Thomas Sowell

Random Thought
2000s, Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays (2006)

Life , Sense

“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 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.”

Thomas Sowell

Creators Syndicate http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1998-11-28/news/9811270852_1_households-liberals-parents November 28, 1998.
1980s–1990s

“Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.”

Thomas Sowell

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

Death , People

“Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise — whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team — is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.”

Thomas Sowell

Real Clear Politics Nov 2008 http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/11/ego_and_mouth.html
2000s

Sport , Success

“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.”

Thomas Sowell

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/09/03/random_thoughts?page=full&comments=true, Sep 03, 2007
2000s

Pain , People , Education , Motivation

“If you don't believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children.”

Thomas Sowell

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

Children

“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

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2004/02/25/random_thoughts/page/full, Feb 25, 2004
2000s

People , Truth , Thinking

“If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy.”

Thomas Sowell

"Supreme Hypocrisy" http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2016/03/29/supreme-hypocrisy-n2139969, 29 March 2016
2010s

“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

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/05/01/random_thoughts, May 01, 2007
2000s

People , Education , Reality

“People who talk incessantly about "change" are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.”

Thomas Sowell

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

People , Way , Change

“Global warming' is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible.”

Thomas Sowell

National Review http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzA5YjM2MzY0ZGI1OWIyNGI4NTdmY2QxZGU3NzM5NjE=, March 15, 2007.
2000s

“Republicans won big, running as Republicans, in 2004. But once they took control of Congress, they started acting like Democrats and lost big. There is a lesson in that somewhere but whether Republicans will learn it is another story entirely.”

Thomas Sowell

Random Thoughts http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/08/26/random_thoughts?page=full&comments=true, 26 August 2008.
2000s

Learning

“Some intellectuals’ downplaying of objective reality and enduring criteria extends beyond social, scientific, or economic phenomena into art, music, and philosophy. The one over-riding consistency across all these disparate venues is the self-exaltation of the intellectuals. Unlike great cultural achievements of the past, such as magnificent cathedrals, which were intended to inspire kings and peasants alike, the hallmark of self-consciously “modern” art and music is its inaccessibility to the masses and often even its deliberate offensiveness to, or mockery of, the masses.
Just as a physical body can continue to live, despite containing a certain amount of microorganisms whose prevalence would destroy it, so a society can survive a certain amount of forces of disintegration within it. But that is very different from saying that there is no limit to the amount, audacity and ferocity of those disintegrative forces which a society can survive, without at least the will to resist.”

Thomas Sowell

Source: 2010s, Intellectuals and Society (2010), Ch. 22 : The Influence of Intellectuals

Art , Music , Reality , Past

“In a country with more than 300 million people, it is remarkable how obsessed the media have become with just one—Donald Trump. What is even more remarkable is that, after seven years of repeated disasters, both domestically and internationally, under a glib egomaniac in the White House, so many potential voters are turning to another glib egomaniac to be his successor.”

Thomas Sowell

"Conservatives Against Trump" http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430126/donald-trump-conservatives-oppose-nomination (21 January 2016), National Review
2010s

People , Housing , Country

“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.”

Thomas Sowell

"The Survival of the Left" https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0908/6005128a.html, Forbes (Sep 8, 1997)
1980s–1990s

Idea

“Those who believe that "basic necessities" should belong to people as a matter of right ignore the implication -- that people are to work only for amenities, frivolities, and ego. Will that mean more work or less work? And if less, where are all those "basic necessities" coming from that the government is supposed to hand out?”

Thomas Sowell

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

People

“What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people—like themselves—need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.”

Thomas Sowell

"Socialist or Fascist?" http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell061212.php3#.XEZfbc2E6Mp, Jewish World Review (June 12, 2012)
2010s
Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.

People , Decision

“If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.”

Thomas Sowell

Wimps Versus Barbarians http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2013/05/21/wimps-versus-barbarians-n1601497/page/full, May 21, 2013
2010s

“Before attempting to determine the effect of institutions, it is necessary to consider the inherent circumstances, constraints, and impelling forces at work in the environment within which the institutional mechanisms function.”

Thomas Sowell

Source: 1980s–1990s, Knowledge and Decisions (1980; 1996), Ch. 2 : Decision-Making Processes

“Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.”

Thomas Sowell

Source: 1980s–1990s, A Conflict of Visions (1987), Ch. 1 : The Role of Vision

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