Quotes from Thomas Sowell

Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism.

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

We need laws written by people who have confronted life in the real world, not in the sheltered world of trust fund recipients of the insulated cocoon of academia.

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.

Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.

If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.

Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

Much of what sophisticates loftily refer to as the "complexityof the real world is in fact the inconsistency in their own minds.

The political left has been weak on protecting society from criminals for more than two centuries.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.

The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances.

Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options

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.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.