Thomas Sowell Quotes
-
It is amazing how many people act as if the right to free speech includes the right to be free of criticism for what you say - which means that other people should not have the same right to free speech that they claim for themselves.
-
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.
-
Republicans won big, running as Republicans, in 2004. But once they took control of Congress, they started acting like Democrats and lost big. There is a lesson in that somewhere but whether Republicans will learn it is another story entirely.
-
One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with the time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
-
Love is a four-letter word, but you don't hear in nearly as often as you hear some other four-letter words. It may be a sign of our times that everyone talks openly about sex, but we seem to be embarrassed to talk about love.
-
Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: Compared to what? At what cost? What are the hard facts?.
-
Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later - if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back.
-
Doing the right thing is fun. If nothing else, it surprises people.
-
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.
-
After political crusades for 'affordable housing' ended up ruining the housing market and much of the economy with it, many of the same politicians are now carrying on a crusade for 'affordable health care.' But what you can afford has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of producing anything. Refusing to pay those costs means that you are just not going to continue getting the same quantity and quality - regardless of what any politician says or how well he says it.
-
Perhaps people who are gushing over the Obama Cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under Sharia law.
-
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?
-
Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.
-
People who know nothing about advertising, nothing about pharmaceuticals, and nothing about economics have been loudly proclaiming that the drug companies spend too much on advertising - and demanding that the government pass laws based on their ignorance.
-
There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary.
-
Many Americans who supported the initial thrust of civil rights, as represented by the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, later felt betrayed as the original concept of equal individual opportunity evolved toward the concept of equal group results.
-
Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.
-
High tax rates that people don't actually pay do not bring the government as much revenue as lower tax rates that they do pay.
-
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.
-
Think about it: What the busybodies are saying is that third parties like themselves -- who are paying nothing to anybody -- should be determining how much somebody else should be paying those who work for them.
-
If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live.
-
The New York times' long-standing motto, 'All the News That's Fit to Print,' should be changed to reflect today's reality: 'Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology.'
-
A passionate commitment to social justice is no substitute for knowing what the hell you're talking about.
-
Senator John McCain could never convince me to vote for him. Only Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama can cause me to vote for McCain.