Quotes from Thomas Sowell

But what can any society today hope to gain by having newborn babies in that society enter the world as heirs to prepackaged grievances against other babies born into that same society on the same day?

In short, reducing the set of mutually acceptable terms tends to reduce the set of mutually acceptable results, with both tenants and landlords ending up worse off on the whole, though in different ways.

even an ideal set of trade-offs must—and should—leave a whole spectrum of unmet needs, because the cost of wiping out the last vestige of any problem is leaving other problems in more dire condition. In short, trade-offs must be incremental rather than categorical, if limited resources are to produce optimal results in any social system as a whole.

The fact that work is cheaper in Dubai than in Japan is not just a fluke. Work is more productive in richer countries. That is one of the reasons these countries are generally more prosperous. Selling used equipment from rich countries to poor countries can be an efficient way to handle the situation for both types of countries.

The built-in excuse has become as standard in discussions of black crime as it is unsubstantiated, except by peer consensus among the intelligentsia. The phrase "troubled youth" is a common example of the unsubstantiated but built-in excuse, since those who use that phrase usually feel no need to offer any specific evidence about the specific individuals they are talking about, who may be creating big trouble for others, while enjoying themselves in doing so.

You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.

Some years ago, in my syndicated column, I challenged anyone to name any economist, of any school of thought, who had actually advocated a "trickle down" theory. No one quoted any economist, politician or person in any other walk of life who had ever advocated such a theory, even though many readers named someone who claimed that someone else had advocated it, without being able to quote anything actually said by that someone else. 2

Flood conditions can be detected sooner and evacuations begun and carried out more quickly where there are ample resources to produce all the cars, planes, and other vehicles needed to move huge numbers of people out of danger. All these things are made possible by the material wealth which is often treated so disdainfully by those promoting "safety." But to kill the goose that lays the golden egg is, in effect, to kill people.

The swirl of their buzzwords—"access," "stigma," "progressive," "diversity," "crisis," etc.—shows a discernible pattern. What these innumerable buzzwords have in common is that they either (1) preempt issues rather than debate them, (2) set the anointed and the benighted on different moral and intellectual planes, or (3) evade the issue of personal responsibility

The next time you see a bum leaving drug needles in a park where children play or urinating in the street, you are seeing your tax dollars at work and the end result of the vision of the anointed.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support – kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as 'racists

Looking at old photographs makes it hard for me to believe that I was ever that thin physically. And remembering some of the things I did in those days makes it hard to believe that I was ever that thin mentally.

Politics is not about empirical realities, but about popular images. So long as the image of rent control is good, it wins votes at election time-and that is what it is all about, as far as politicians are concerned.

A cynic once said that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government policy.

when people choose their occupations according to what the public wants and is willing to pay for, that is "greed," but when the public is forced to pay for what the anointed want done, that is "public service.

Another Boston Globe editorial complained that the burden of proof "now shifts to the plaintiff "10—as if this were an unusual place for the burden of proof to be.

Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of "greed" is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people's money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largess dispensed from such taxation.

The hubris of imagining that one can judge merit, as distinguished from judging behavior and performance, can be seen in attempts of educators to grade students according to how well they used their own ability, rather than how well they performed relative to some fixed standard or to other students.

Piketty's crucial misstep is verbally converting a fluid process over time into a rigid structure, with a more or less permanent top one percent living isolated from the rest of society that is supposedly subjected to their control or influence. It is a vision divorced from demonstrable facts, however consonant it may be with prevailing preconceptions.

Access is one of the great dishonest words of our times. I have had as much access to a career in professional basketball as Michael Jordan had. He just happened to play the game a lot better. Indeed, practically everybody has played the game a lot better than I did.

It would be hard to find anywhere in history a record of any other country going to such efforts, for so long, in a cause from which it could gain so little and lose so much.

Japan, newly emerging on the world scene in the late nineteenth century, sought its science and engineering in Scotland.

Geography is not egalitarian.

While those with the tragic vision may see social issues in terms of making the best choice among limited and often unpalatable alternatives, those with the vision of the anointed tend to see these same issues in terms of what should be done to make things right in the cosmic scheme of things.