Top 500 Thomas Sowell Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.”

— Thomas Sowell

52. “No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.”

— Thomas Sowell

53. “The law of diminishing returns means that even the most beneficial prinicple will become harmful if carried far enough.”

— Thomas Sowell

54. “The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn’t work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good.”

— Thomas Sowell

55. “The freedom of America is the freedom to live your own life and take your own chances.”

— Thomas Sowell

56. “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

57. “You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.”

— Thomas Sowell

58. “What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?”

— Thomas Sowell

59. “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

60. “What the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.”

— Thomas Sowell

61. “People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?”

— Thomas Sowell

62. “The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people’s money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.”

— Thomas Sowell

63. “One of the many disservices done to young people by our schools and colleges is giving them the puffed up notion that they are in a position to pass sweeping judgments on a world that they have barely begun to experience.”

— Thomas Sowell

64. “There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.”

— Thomas Sowell

65. “One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans – anything except reason.”

— Thomas Sowell

66. “If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live.”

— Thomas Sowell

67. “The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.”

— Thomas Sowell

68. “We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.”

— Thomas Sowell

69. “No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems – of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.”

— Thomas Sowell

70. “Relevance is not something you can predict. It is something you discover after the fact.”

— Thomas Sowell

71. “Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius.”

— Thomas Sowell

72. “Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals.”

— Thomas Sowell

73. “Civil rights used to be about treating everyone the same. But today some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.”

— Thomas Sowell

74. “If a word means everything, then in means nothing.”

— Thomas Sowell

75. “Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.”

— Thomas Sowell

76. “The big problem in the long process of dumbing down the schools is that you can reach a point of no return. How are parents who never received a decent education themselves to recognize that their children are not getting a decent education?”

— Thomas Sowell

77. “The idealism of the left is a very selfish idealism. In their war against ‘the rich’ and big business, they don’t care how much collateral damage there is to workers who end up end up unemployed.”

— Thomas Sowell

78. “There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary.”

— Thomas Sowell

79. “The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s own behavior.”

— Thomas Sowell

80. “Everyone may be called “comrade,” but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades.”

— Thomas Sowell

81. “Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.”

— Thomas Sowell

82. “The difference between a policy and a crusade is that a policy is judged by its results, while a crusade is judged by how good it makes its crusaders feel.”

— Thomas Sowell

83. “You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization – including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility, and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain – without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.”

— Thomas Sowell

84. “Too many people – some of them judges – seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.”

— Thomas Sowell

85. “The only thing better than “hands-on” experience is hands-off experience – enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.”

— Thomas Sowell

86. “Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.”

— Thomas Sowell

87. “It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.”

— Thomas Sowell

88. “The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.”

— Thomas Sowell

89. “Women can say anything they want to men, or blacks to whites, with impunity. But strong words in the other direction can bring down on students the wrath of the campus thought police – as well as punishments that can extend to suspension or expulsion.”

— Thomas Sowell

90. “Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom.”

— Thomas Sowell

91. “Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.”

— Thomas Sowell

92. “Doing the right thing is fun. If nothing else, it surprises people.”

— Thomas Sowell

93. “Neither the depth of despondency nor the height of euphoria tells you how long either will last.”

— Thomas Sowell

94. “It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it “greed” to want to keep what you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes.”

— Thomas Sowell

95. “If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.”

— Thomas Sowell

96. “It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new ‘solution’ to society’s ‘problems.’”

— Thomas Sowell

97. “For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.”

— Thomas Sowell

98. “You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.”

— Thomas Sowell

99. “If sanity ever returns to our society and we stop taking pretentious elites seriously, one of the signs will be that the public will force the removal of those ugly pieces of twisted metal that are called ‘art’ in front of government buildings.”

— Thomas Sowell

100. “The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.”

— Thomas Sowell