Thomas Sowell: Trending quotes

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Thomas Sowell: 202 quotes48 likes

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

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

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

Source: Knowledge And Decisions

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“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)

“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

“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

“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)

“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

“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 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)

“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

“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

“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