Quotes By Thomas Sowell

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

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

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.

Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America.

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

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?

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.

Much 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.

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.

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

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

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.

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

The real minimum wage is zero.

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.