Thomas Sowell Quotes

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

"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."

"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."

"People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."

"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."

"If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly."

"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."

"President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again."

"Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more."

"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."

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

"It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all."

"Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them."

"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."

"There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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