Thomas Sowell Quotes

No segment of the population has lost more by the agendas of the liberal constituencies of the Democratic Party than the black population. The teachers' unions, environmental fanatics and the ACLU are just some of the groups to whose interests blacks have been sacrificed wholesale. Lousy education and high crime rates in the ghettos, and unaffordable housing elsewhere with building restrictions, are devastating prices to pay for liberalism.

Someone once said that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. That may have been true when he said it, but today taxes are mostly the price we pay so that politicians can play Santa Claus and get reelected.

The inefficiency of political control of an economy has been demonstrated more often, in more places, and under more varied conditions, than almost anything outside the realm of pure science.

The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial prinicple will become harmful if carried far enough.

What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.

It is bad enough that so many people believe things without any evidence. What is worse is that some people have no conception of evidence and regard facts as just someone else's opinion.

If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.

Many bad policies are simply good policies taken too far.

Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.

ANYONE who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them - instead of answering their arguments.

There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims.

If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback.

What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

The 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.

Although the big word on the left is 'compassion,' the big agenda on the left is dependency.

The desire to order other people around and make them conform to one own's vision takes many forms.

The dominant orthodoxy in development economics was that Third World countries were trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty that could be broken only by massive foreign aid from the more prosperous industrial nations of the world. This was in keeping with a more general vision on the Left that people were essentially divided into three categories - the heartless, the helpless, and wonderful people like themselves, who would rescue the helpless by playing Lady Bountiful with the taxpayers' money.

If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.

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.

Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.

There are only two economists in Congress and hundreds of lawyers. Does that explain why the government is in such a mess?

Another way of verbally masking elite preemption of other people's decisions is to use the word 'ask'-as in 'We are just asking everyone to pay their fair share.' But of course governments do not ask, they: tell. The Internal Revenue Service does not 'ask' for contributions. It takes.

Barack Obama has done more than anyone else to promote the dangerous illusion that we can choose whether to have a war or not. But our enemies have already made that choice. Retired Marine Corps General James Mattis said: “No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it's over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote“.

Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to 'change the United States of America,' the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities.

Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden.

Those government officials who want more power are not going to stop unless they get stopped.

The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution.

Envy is always referred to by its political alias, 'social justice.

Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on into micro-managing automobile companies and medical care. They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

The kinds of people we need in government are precisely the kinds of people who are most reluctant to go into government -- people who understand the inherent dangers of power and feel a distaste for using it, but who may do so for a few years as a civic duty. The worst kind of people to have in government are those who see it as a golden opportunity to impose their own superior wisdom and virtue on others.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people - and to hate those other people.

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other 'studies' was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these 'studies' are about propaganda rather than serious education.

No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.

Economic policies need to be analyzed in terms of the incentives they create, rather than the hopes that inspired them.

The government is indeed an institution, but "the market" is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste.

After the risky mortgage-lending practices fostered by government intervention led to massive defaults and foreclosures that caused financial institutions to collapse or be bailed out, Congressman Frank changed his tune completely.

...Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.

While President Barack Obama has, in one sense, tipped his hand by saying that he wants judges with "empathy" for certain groups, he has in a more fundamental sense concealed the real goal - getting judges who will ratify an ever-expanding scope of the power of the federal government and an ever-declining restraint by the Constitution of the United States. This is consistent with everything else that Obama has done in office and is consistent with his decades-long track record of alliances with people who reject the fundamentals of American society.

Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.

Someone once said that many bad policies are just good policies that have been carried too far. For example, we have taken tolerance to such an extreme that we tolerate the immigration into our country of millions of intolerant people who hate millions of Americans who are already here.

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

Just as any moron can destroy a priceless Ming vase, so the shallow and ill-educated people who run our schools can undermine and destroy from within a great civilization that took centuries of dedicated effort to create and maintain.

Don't you get tired of seeing so many "non-conformists" with the same non-conformist look?

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.

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.

One of the big differences between Democrats and Republicans is that we at least know what the Democrats stand for, whether we agree with it or not. But, for Republicans, we have to guess