Quotes from Thomas Sowell

In an age of artificial intelligence, too many of our schools and colleges are producing artificial stupidity.

Seldom is the claim made that black Americans alive at this moment are worse off than if their ancestors had been left in Africa. Any attempt to make that case with statistics on income, life expectancy, or numerous other variables would collapse like a house of cards.

teachers who pander to minority students by turning their courses into rap sessions and ethnic navel-gazing exercises capture their interest and allegiance.

Just as price fluctuations allocate scarce resources which have alternative uses, price controls which limit those fluctuations reduce the incentives for individuals to limit their own use of scarce resources desired by others.

In short, rent control reduces the rate of housing turnover.

Free-loading at emergency rooms—mandated by government—makes being uninsured a viable option.

Minimum wage laws appear to give low-income workers something for nothing—and appearances are what count in politics. Realities can be left to others, so long as appearances get votes.

Statistics compiled from what people say may be worse than useless, if they lead to a belief that those numbers convey a reality that can be relied on for serious decision-making about social policies.

Differences in habits and attitudes are differences in human capital, just as much as differences in knowledge and skills—and such differences create differences in economic outcomes.

The power of the intelligentsia is demonstrated not only by their ability to create a general climate of opinion that strikes fear into those who oppose their agenda but also by their ability to create a climate of opinion which richly rewards those political leaders whose decisions are consonant with the vision of the intelligentsia.

At a minimum, history shows how dangerous it can be, to a whole society, to automatically and incessantly attribute statistical differences in outcomes to malevolent actions against the less successful.

In short, some of the least qualified students, taught by the least qualified professors in the lowest quality courses supply most American public school teachers.

Empirically, political activity and political success have been neither necessary nor sufficient for economic advancement. Nor has eager political participation or outstanding success in politics been translated into faster group achievement.

In short, the anointed are helped to make yet another group feel like victims and to regard the anointed as their rescuers.

When it is proclaimed that one must become more "sensitive" to various ethnic, linguistic, sexual, or lifestyle groups, neither a reason nor a definition usually accompanies this opaque imperative.

The ignorance, prejudices, and groupthink of an educated elite are still ignorance, prejudice, and groupthink—and for those with one percent of the knowledge in a society to be guiding or controlling those with the other 99 percent is as perilous as it is absurd.

The time is long overdue to count the costs of runaway rhetoric and heedless accusations - especially since most of the costs, including the high social cost of a breakdown of law and order, are paid by vulnerable people for whose benefit such rhetoric and such accusations are ostensibly being made.

People who depict markets as cold, impersonal institutions, and their own notions as humane and compassionate, have it directly backwards. It is when people make their own economic decisions, taking into account costs that matter to themselves, and known only to themselves, that this knowledge becomes part of the trade-odds they choose, whether as consumers or producers.

While those with the vision of the anointed emphasize the knowledge and resources available to promote the various policy programs they favor, those with the tragic vision of the human condition emphasize that these resources are taken from other uses ("there is no free lunch") and that the knowledge and wisdom required to run ambitious social programs far exceed what any human being has ever possessed, as the unintended negative consequences of such programs repeatedly demonstrate.

One of the most central—and most controversial—premises of the civil rights vision is that statistical disparities in incomes, occupations, education, etc., represent moral inequities, and are caused by "society.

If one chooses to call tests that require the mastery of abstractions culturally biased, because some cultures put more emphasis on abstractions than others, that raises fundamental questions about what the tests are for. In a world where the ability to master abstractions is fundamental to mathematics, science and other endeavors, the measurement of that ability is not an arbitrary bias. A culture-free test might be appropriate in a culture-free society—but there are no such societies.

The ideal of freedom behind the American Revolution had its effect in freeing thousands of people from slavery in the newly formed United States, something that was happening nowhere else in the world at that time. To call slavery "America's original sin" is to turn reality upside down.

The key word among advocates of multiculturalism became "diversity." Sweeping claims for the benefits of demographic and cultural diversity in innumerable institutions and circumstances have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given. It is one of the purest examples of arguments without arguments, and of the force of sheer repetition, insistence and intimidation.

If you are serious about education, then you need to start a lot earlier than fifteen years old to give each child a decent shot at life in the real world, as distinguished from make-believe equality while in school. Ability grouping or "tracking"—so hated by the ideological egalitarians—is one of the best ways of doing that.