Thomas Sowell Quotes - Page 17

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• We're not a socialist country, because the socialists believe in government ownership in the means of production, but the fascists believe that the government should have private ownership and the politicians should tell people how to run the businesses. So that's the route we seem to be going.

  Thomas Sowell

  Running, Country, Believe

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.

  Thomas Sowell

  Compassion, Pay, Disaster

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.170, Hoover Press

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• Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market - contrary to rhetoric.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Government, Affordable Housing

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.30, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• One of the beauties of an economy coordinated by price movements is that nobody has to understand it in order for it to work.

  Thomas Sowell

  Order, Movement, Economy

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• So long as public schools are treated as places that exist to provide guaranteed jobs to members of the teachers' unions, do not be surprised to see American students continuing to score lower on international tests than students in countries that spend a lot less per pupil than we do.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Teacher, Jobs

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• Economics is concerned with what emerges, not what anyone intended.

  Thomas Sowell

  Economics, Concerned

  Thomas Sowell (2010). “Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy”, p.68, Basic Books

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• Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Diversity, Parent

  Thomas Sowell (1993). “Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• 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.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mean, Political, Quality

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• American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected.

  Thomas Sowell

  Two, World, Prosperity

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.120, Hoover Press

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• In this era of non-judgmental mush, too many Americans have become incapable of facing the brutal reality of unprovoked hatred, based on envy, resentment and ultimately on a vicious urge to lash out against others for the pain of ones own insignificance. That has been a common thread in things as disparate as ghetto riots, two world wars, and now Islamic terrorism.

  Thomas Sowell

  Pain, War, Islamic

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• Freedom... refer[s] to a social relationship among people-namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect.

  Thomas Sowell

  Freedom, People, Decision

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• Fairness' is one of the great mantras of the left. Since everyone has his own definition of fairness, that word is a blank check for the expansion of government power. What fairness means in practice is that third parties -- busybodies -- can prevent mutual accommodations by others.

  Thomas Sowell

  Party, Mean, Equality

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.225, Hoover Press

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• A recent poll shows that a majority of blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics do not think the Census should be classifying people as black, white, Asian and Hispanic.

  Thomas Sowell

  Thinking, White, People

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• Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.

  Thomas Sowell

  Men, Ninety Nine, Ideas

  Thomas Sowell (1995). “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”, Basic Books

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• In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment. The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics.

  Thomas Sowell

  Medicine, Long, Political

  "Old rhetoric in new times" by Thomas Sowell, townhall.com. August 26, 2003.

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• The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool.

  Thomas Sowell

  Believe, Ideas, Intellectual

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• Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Said, Ready

  "Random Thoughts". townhall.com. September 03, 2007.

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• To say the Constitution is living is to say that it's dead.

  Thomas Sowell

  Constitution

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• The government is now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s - use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations. To this day, we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s.

  Thomas Sowell

  Agriculture, Government, Tough Times

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• The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Wish, Facts

  "A 'Stimulus Package'?" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. January 29, 2008.

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• If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left.

  Thomas Sowell

  Engineering, Knowledgeable Person, Political

  "Don't Be So Sure". www.nationalreview.com. May 16, 2007.

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• If facts, logic, and scientific procedures are all just arbitrarily "socially constructed" notions, then all that is left is consensus--more specifically peer consensus, the kind of consensus that matters to adolescents or to many among the intelligentsia.

  Thomas Sowell

  Peers, Matter, Facts

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• Implicit in the activist conception of government is the assumption that you can take the good things in a complex system for granted, and just improve the things that are not so good. What is lacking in this conception is any sense that a society, an institution, or even a single human being, is an intricate system of fragile inter-relationships, whose complexities are little understood and easily destabilized.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Littles, Assumption

  Thomas Sowell (1993). “Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• Young people in general - and young women in particular - need to understand that they cannot retrieve in their forties the opportunities they threw away in their twenties.

  Thomas Sowell

  Opportunity, People, Age

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• A lot of what is called 'public service' consists of making hoops for other people to jump through. It is a great career for those who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

  Thomas Sowell

  Careers, People, Political

  Thomas Sowell (2006). “Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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