Someone once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of our own ignorance. Our schools are depriving millions of students of that kind of knowledge by promoting "self-esteem" and encouraging them to have opinions on things of which they are grossly ignorant, if not misinformed.
Thomas SowellChild poverty in the United States declined after the work requirement was put in there. People realized that they had to work and people went out and worked and they got off welfare.
Thomas SowellOut of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.
Thomas SowellMuch of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Thomas SowellEducation is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.
Thomas SowellThe poor are the very lifeblood of the left, attracting activists, supporting among the intelligentsia, and - perhaps most important - allowing the left to indulge in self-congratulation as people who 'care.' But, if they really cared, they would want to know what the facts are and what the actual consequences of their various nostrums are.
Thomas Sowell