Quotes from Thomas Sowell

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?

The only thing better than "hands-on" experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.

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.

All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.

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.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.

The left takes its vision seriously - more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep.

People who talk incessantly about "change" are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.

A friend from India told me that a countryman of his said: "I want to go to America. I want to see a country where poor people are fat."

Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?

You do not need proof for what people want to believe.

What does 'economic justice' mean, except that you want something that someone else produced, without having to produce anything yourself in return?

What is called 'capitalism' might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.