Sports are the reason I am out of shape. I watch them all on TV.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Sports, One liners
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.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Decisions
Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.
—Thomas Sowell
We always hear about the haves and the have-nots. Why don’t we hear about the doers and the do-nots.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Fame
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats, procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
—Thomas Sowell
Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Capitalism
There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded,
as the ability to convince parasites they are victims.
—Thomas Sowell
‘Fairness’ is one of the great mantras of the left. Since everyone has his own definition of fairness, that word is a blank check for the expansion of government power. What fairness means in practice is that third parties—busybodies—can prevent mutual accommodations by others.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Equality
All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities.
—Thomas Sowell
The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Explanation
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Honesty
One of the sad signs of our times is that we have diminished those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Welfare
Young people in general – and young women in particular – need to understand that they cannot retrieve in their forties the opportunities they threw away in their twenties.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Age
Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all—inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Government, Anger
What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts.
—Thomas Sowell
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.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Economics
Someone once said that a fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him. The implications of that undermine most of the agenda of the political left.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Liberalism
The real minimum wage is zero unemployment.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Work
To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have cost without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more to produce if they were produced by enterprises operating without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits.
—Thomas Sowell
Compassion is the use of public funds to buy votes.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Welfare, One liners
Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, “What about the other 90 percent of the people?”
—Thomas Sowell
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.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Socialism
Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Liberalism
Too much of what is called “education” is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Isolation
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.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Liberalism
If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Battle
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Welfare
Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Weather
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Socialism
Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.
—Thomas Sowell
Topics: Welfare
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Milton Friedman American Economist
- John Rawls American Philosopher
- Cynthia Ozick American Novelist, Essayist
- Tim Robbins American Actor, Director
- Robert Reich American Psychiatrist
- Shelby Foote American Novelist, Historian
- Maria Mitchell American Astronomer
- Henry George American Economist
- Alexander Hamilton American Statesman
- James Madison American Statesman, President
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