Thomas Sowell Quotes

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

Funny, Knowledge, Ignorance

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
Thomas Sowell

Government, Amazing, Cannot

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.
Thomas Sowell

Stupid, Hard, Wrong

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.
Thomas Sowell

Politics, Today, Play

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.
Thomas Sowell

Failure, Trust, Dangerous

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
Thomas Sowell

After, Big, Few

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
Thomas Sowell

Freedom, Government, Long

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

Failure, Ignore, Socialism

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.
Thomas Sowell

Business, Important, Understand

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.
Thomas Sowell

Care, Help, Political

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
Thomas Sowell

Work, Political, Find

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

Leadership, Enjoy, Charge

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.
Thomas Sowell

Good, History, Past

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

Government, Real, Goal

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

Time, Important, Tell

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.
Thomas Sowell

Politics, Enough, Economics

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.
Thomas Sowell

Feeling, Thinking, Problem

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

Freedom, Blood, Price

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
Thomas Sowell

Life, Government, Fair

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

Women, Men, Country

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.
Thomas Sowell

Life, Money, Getting

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
Thomas Sowell

Nothing, Everything, Understand

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.
Thomas Sowell

Cannot, Else, Color

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.
Thomas Sowell

Hope, Thinking, Control

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.
Thomas Sowell

Win, Against, Making

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Economist

Born: July 30, 1930

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