Quotes from Thomas Sowell

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 largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as "greed" on the part of government or the clientele of government.

As an entrepreneur in India put it: 'Indians have learned from painful experience that the state does not work on behalf of the people. More often than not, it works on behalf of itself.

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.

Everyone may be called comrade, but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization -- including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain -- without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.

Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.

Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama.

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.

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.

People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.

When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems—of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.

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

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions — and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

I am so old that I can remember when other people's achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.

Whatever we wish to achieve in the future, it must begin by knowing where we are in the present- not where we wish we were, or where we wish others to think we are, but where we are in fact.

No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.

However much history may be invoked in support of these policies (affirmative action), no policy can apply to history but can only apply to the present or the future. The past may be many things, but it is clearly irrevocable. Its sins can no more be purged than its achievements can be expunged. Those who suffered in centuries past are as much beyond our help as those who sinned are beyond our retribution.

Slippery use of the word "privilege" is part of a vogue of calling achievements "privileges"—a vogue which extends far beyond educational issues, spreading a toxic confusion in many other aspects of life.

Mystical references to 'society' and its programs to 'help' may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

The New York Times' long-standing motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print" should be changed to reflect today's reality: "Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology.

Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.

What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.

For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.