Top 500 Thomas Sowell Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.”

— Thomas Sowell

252. “Differences in habits and attitudes are differences in human capital, just as much as differences in knowledge and skills – and such differences create differences in economic outcomes.”

— Thomas Sowell

253. “I wish that some way could be found to add up all the staggering costs imposed on millions of ordinary people, just so a relative handful of self-righteous environmental cultists can go around feeling puffed up with themselves.”

— Thomas Sowell

254. “Apparently the only people who are supposed to be responsible are the taxpayers – and they are increasingly made responsible for other people’s irresponsibility.”

— Thomas Sowell

255. “People who decry the fact that businesses are in business “just to make money” seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want.”

— Thomas Sowell

256. “Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.”

— Thomas Sowell

257. “Some people say that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. But the runaway taxes of our time are the price we pay for being gullible.”

— Thomas Sowell

258. “Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama.”

— Thomas Sowell

259. “One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.”

— Thomas Sowell

260. “Many bad policies are simply good policies taken too far.”

— Thomas Sowell

261. “If you truly believe in the brotherhood of man, then you must believe that blacks are just as capable of being racists as whites are.”

— Thomas Sowell

262. “The concept of “microaggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.”

— Thomas Sowell

263. “Nothing as mundane as mere evidence can be allowed to threaten a vision so deeply satisfying.”

— Thomas Sowell

264. “The talkers and writers resent being left on the sidelines by the doers.”

— Thomas Sowell

265. “We need laws written by people who have confronted life in the real world, not in the sheltered world of trust fund recipients of the insulated cocoon of academia.”

— Thomas Sowell

266. “Wrongs abound in times and places around the world – inflicted on, and perpetrated by, people of virtually every race, creed and color. But what can any society today hope to gain by having newborn babies in that society enter the word as heirs to prepackaged grievances against other babies born into that same society on the same day.”

— Thomas Sowell

267. “People have a vested interest in promoting one set of polices rather than finding out what the truth is.”

— Thomas Sowell

268. “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

269. “All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.”

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

271. “It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.”

— Thomas Sowell

272. “What makes it possible for politicians to do so many things that are economically counterproductive is that neither the public nor the media know enough of the basics to understand what’s wrong with what they’re saying.”

— Thomas Sowell

273. “To say the Constitution is living is to say that it’s dead.”

— Thomas Sowell

274. “That educators who have repeatedly failed to do what they are hired to do, and trained to do, should take on sweeping roles as amateur psychologists, sociologists, and social philosophers seems almost inexplicable – except that they are doing it with other people’s money and experimenting on other people’s children. There.”

— Thomas Sowell

275. “After the risky mortgage-lending practices fostered by government intervention led to massive defaults and foreclosures that caused financial institutions to collapse or be bailed out, Congressman Frank changed his tune completely.”

— Thomas Sowell

276. “People who believe in evolution in biology often believe in creationism in government. In other words, they believe that the universe and all the creatures in it could have evolved spontaneously, but that the economy is too complicated to operate without being directed by politicians.”

— Thomas Sowell

277. “The curse of the intelligentsia is their ability to rationalize and re-define. Ordinary people, lacking that gift, are forced to face reality.”

— Thomas Sowell

278. “All things are the same except for the differences, and different except for the similarities.”

— Thomas Sowell

279. “Someone once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of our own ignorance. Our schools are depriving millions of students of that kind of knowledge by promoting “self-esteem” and encouraging them to have opinions on things of which they are grossly ignorant, if not misinformed.”

— Thomas Sowell

280. “If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both parents working.”

— Thomas Sowell

281. “Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.”

— Thomas Sowell

282. “When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, ‘there ought to be a law,’ you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.”

— Thomas Sowell

283. “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.”

— Thomas Sowell

284. “Among the precepts that Andrew Jackson’s mother taught him were never to sue anybody for slander or for assault and battery: “Always settle them cases yourself.”

— Thomas Sowell

285. “Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea – in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.”

— Thomas Sowell

286. “When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.”

— Thomas Sowell

287. “Right after liberal Democrats, the most dangerous politicians are country club Republicans.”

— Thomas Sowell

288. “When all is said and done, the Constitution of the United States is a set of words on a piece of paper. The only way that the Constitution can protect us is if we protect the Constitution.”

— Thomas Sowell

289. “Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world.”

— Thomas Sowell

290. “An e-mail from a reader says that liberals like to take the moral high ground, even though their own moral relativism means that there is no moral high ground.”

— Thomas Sowell

291. “There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.288.”

— Thomas Sowell

292. “The economic disasters of socialism and communism come from assuming a blanket superiority of those who want to run a whole economy.”

— Thomas Sowell

293. “The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his ‘basic rights.’”

— Thomas Sowell

294. “If you have a right to respect, that means other people don’t have a right to their own opinions.”

— Thomas Sowell

295. “One of the painfully sobering realizations that come from reading history is the utter incompetence that is possible among leaders of whole nations and empires – and the blind faith that such leaders can nevertheless inspire among the people who are enthralled by their words or their posturing.”

— Thomas Sowell

296. “Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to ‘change the United States of America,’ the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.”

— Thomas Sowell

297. “Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden.”

— Thomas Sowell

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

— Thomas Sowell

299. “If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a ‘stimulus,’ then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power.”

— Thomas Sowell

300. “People used to say, “Ignorance is no excuse.” Today, ignorance is no problem. After all, you have “a right to your own opinion” – and self-esteem to boot.”

— Thomas Sowell