Thomas Sowell Quotes

I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.
THOMAS SOWELL

Achievement Consider Inspirational Old People Remember
When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
THOMAS SOWELL

Discrimination People Politics Treatment
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
THOMAS SOWELL

Absence Born Civil Effect Generation Late
Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
THOMAS SOWELL

Argument Extrapolation Ground Refuge
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

Appreciate DAngry Failure Honor People Trust
For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.
THOMAS SOWELL

Dead Enlight Experience Human Past Tradition
In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.
THOMAS SOWELL

Acceptance Agree Evidence
What is called an educated person is often someone who has had a dangerously superficial exposure to a wide spectrum of subjects.
THOMAS SOWELL

DAngry Education Exposure Person Subject
The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
THOMAS SOWELL

Achievement Destroy Equality Freedom Interest People
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
THOMAS SOWELL

Absence Acceptance Civil Defend Force Prepare
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
THOMAS SOWELL

Agony Blood Cheap Cost Freedom Price
I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.
THOMAS SOWELL

Earn Greedy Human Nature Money
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

Confuse Feelings Problem Reading Thinking Trouble
A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
THOMAS SOWELL

Ending Equality Freedom Society
Heedless of the past, we are flying blind into the future.
THOMAS SOWELL

Blind Fly Future Past
No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.
THOMAS SOWELL

Blame Century Choose Culture Past
Justice at all costs’ is not justice.
THOMAS SOWELL

Cost Deep Injustice Justice One Liner
It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.
THOMAS SOWELL

Enjoyment Ignorance Moral People Superior Try
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

Black Black Lives Matter Comparison Funny Parents White
As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.
THOMAS SOWELL

Achievement Century History Ideas Kill Power
Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous.
THOMAS SOWELL

Disastrous Ideas Reality Social Wonderful
As an entrepreneur in India put it: ‘Indians have learned from painful experience that the state does not work on behalf of the people. More often than not, it works on behalf of itself.
THOMAS SOWELL

Entrepreneur Experience Learning Pain People Work
The purpose of education is to give the student the intellectual tools to analyze, whether verbally or numerically, and to reach conclusions based on logic and evidence.
THOMAS SOWELL

Education Evidence Intellectual Logic Student
Intellect is not wisdom.
THOMAS SOWELL

Intelelct One Liner Wisdom
Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.
THOMAS SOWELL

Bail Economy Life Lost Mortage People
Racism does not have a good track record. It’s been tried out for a long time and you’d think by now we’d want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.
THOMAS SOWELL

Character Management Racism Record Time
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

Assume Automatic FAction Government Market Reason

Other Famous Personalities