Thomas Sowell Quotes

...each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it read more

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

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about read more

Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help

Since man does not create physical matter, those who handle material objects in the production process are not producers in read more

Since man does not create physical matter, those who handle material objects in the production process are not producers in that sense. Economic benefits result from the transformation of matter in form, location, or availability (intellectually or temporally). It is these transformations that create economic benefits valued by consumers, and whoever arranges such transformations contributes to the value of things, whether his hands actually come into contact with physical objects or not.

Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other read more

Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other 90 percent of the people?"

Cultures contain many cues and inducements to dissuade the individual from approaching ultimate limits, in much the same way that read more

Cultures contain many cues and inducements to dissuade the individual from approaching ultimate limits, in much the same way that a special warning strip of land around the edge of a baseball field lets a player know that he is about to run into a concrete wall when he is preoccupied with catching the ball. The wider that strip of land and the more sensitive the player is to the changing composition of the ground under his feet as he pursues the ball, the more effective the warning. Romanticizing or lionizing as "individualistic" those people who disregard social cues and inducements increases the danger of head-on collisions with inherent social limits. Decrying various forms of social disapproval is in effect narrowing the warning strip.

Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into read more

Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along.

Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.".

Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.".

Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in read more

Knowledge can be enormously costly, and is often scattered in widely uneven fragments, too small to be individually usable in decision making. The communication and coordination of these scattered fragments of knowledge is one of the basic problems- perhaps the basic problem- of any society.

Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.

Force is the antithesis of freedom, but force must be used, if only to defend against other force.

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing read more

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what has worked with what sounded good. In area after area- crime, education, housing, race relations- the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.