Quotes from Thomas Sowell

financial transactions that produced both wealth and unpopularity.

In many fields, it is often the specialist—sometimes the monomaniac—who is most likely to produce the peak achievements

stability of government and dependability of laws which attracted foreigners.

The fervor for establishing public schools in Massachusetts found no counterpart in Virginia, where illiteracy was much higher and education was largely restricted to those wealthy enough to afford to have their own children educated at home by tutors. In Virginia, the printing press was deliberately restricted by the powers that be, to keep reading matter from the masses, while the aristocracy often had impressive libraries in their homes.

More to the point, if he did cancel the tour in order to fight that tax, would we regard him as a rational man of high principle or as a doctrinaire, a moral exhibitionist, or an egomaniac

One of the reasons for paying people for their productivity, rather than their merits, is that productivity is far easier to determine than merit.

Between 50,000 and 100,000 Huguenots fled to Britain from France in the seventeenth century, particularly after revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had previously guaranteed religious freedom to Protestants.67

Just one example were the European slaves brought to the coast of North Africa by pirates. These European slaves were more numerous than the African slaves brought to the United States and to the American colonies from which it was formed. But the politicization of history has shrunk the public perception of slavery to whatever is most expedient for promoting politically correct agendas today.

To suggest that "society" can simply "arrange" better outcomes somehow, without specifying the processes, the costs or the risks, is to ignore the tragic history of the twentieth century, written in the blood of millions, killed in peacetime by their own governments that were given extraordinary powers in the name of lofty goals.

By 1709, the Irish owned only 14 percent of the land in their own

For thousands of years, imperial conquests have been launched by Asians, Africans, and indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere, as well as by Europeans.

Between 1978 and 1995, China had a spectacular growth rate of 9 percent per annum as a result of the price liberalization that followed Mao's death in 1976. This is in contrast to the serious economic problems that China had due to the strong government control measures promoted by that communist leader.

is hard to imagine anything more conducive to unending internal strife and a weakening of the bonds that hold a society together. The tragic history of territorial irredentism offers little reason for optimism about moral irredentism.

In Winston Churchill's words: We owe London to Rome.34

Adam Smith declared "the good temper and moderation of contending factions" to be "the most essential circumstance in the public morals of a free people."51 But what good temper or moderation can be expected when a major segment of the population becomes convinced that "the system is rigged" against them and morality is just a giant fraud?

Not since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time, educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think but how to think. Today, their role is far too often to teach students what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of 'race, class and gender.

Often it is those who are most critical of a Eurocentric view of the world who are most Eurocentric when it comes to the evils and shortcomings of the human race.

While capitalism has a visible cost - profit - that does not exist under socialism, socialism has an invisible cost - inefficiency - that is eradicated under capitalism through losses and bankruptcy.

In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons…and supplying the means of keeping alive, or reviving, dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury.38

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

should also be noted that the Constitution's distinction in counting people for representation in Congress was between slave and free, not black and white. Free blacks were counted the same as whites—and free blacks existed before the Constitution existed.

Blaming economic crises on "greed" is like blaming plane crashes on gravity. Certainly planes wouldn't crash if it wasn't for gravity. But when thousands of planes fly millions of miles every day without crashing, explaining why a particular plane crashed because of gravity gets you nowhere. Neither does talking about "greed," which is constant like gravity.

By 1912, the British Empire had a population of more than 440 million people, of whom only 10 percent lived in the British Isles.41

Adam Smith declared "the good temper and moderation of contending factions" to be "the most essential circumstance in the public morals of a free people." But what good temper or moderation can be expected when a major segment of the population becomes convinced that "the system is rigged" against them and morality is just a giant fraud?