Thomas Sowell Quotes
Our fate is matched by the total freedom we have to react to our fate. It is as if we were dealt a hand of card. Once we have them, we are free to play them as we choose.
The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.
The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances.
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.
High tax rates that people don't actually pay do not bring the government as much revenue as lower tax rates that they do pay.
There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?
People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.
Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions.
The whole idea of equal justice under law is completely incompatible with the idea of judges deciding cases according to "empathy".
The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool.
Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius.
People who think that they are being 'exploited' should ask themselves whether they would be missed if they left, or whether people would say: 'Good riddance?'
All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.
All justice is inherently social. Can someone on a desert island be either just or unjust?
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.
The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.
Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from.
Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk.
Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.
The political mirage of something for nothing, from leaders who 'care,' has ruined many a nation.
People have a vested interest in promoting one set of polices rather than finding out what the truth is.
Let's face it, most of us are not half as smart as we may sometimes think we are-- and for intellectuals, not one-tenth as smart.
Contrary to the vision of the left, it was the free market which produced affordable housing - before government intervention made housing unaffordable.
You don't send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like 'shooting an unarmed child,' when that 'child' was beating him bloody.
The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial prinicple will become harmful if carried far enough.
Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
Few professors would dare to publish research or teach a course debunking the claims made in various ethnic, gender, or other 'studies' courses.
Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.
How much more of an injustice is it that people who work get more money than people who don't work?
Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.
It doesnt matter what you do if you dont do what matters. If you do what matters it doesnt matter what you do.
As a rule of thumb. Congressional legislation that is bipartisan is usually twice as bad as legislation that is partisan.
The Congressional Budget Office has been embarrassed repeatedly by making projections based on the assumption that tax revenues and tax rates move in the same direction.
American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected.
You need to be empathetic in your own personal life and we help our neighbors and our friends out who are struggling in our neighborhoods. But we don't make bad decisions based on empathy.
Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them.
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.
Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.
The desire of businessmen for profits is what drives prices down unless forcibly prevented from engaging in price competition, usually by governmental activity.