41 Quotes By Thomas Sowell


It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
Thomas Sowell on amazing

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
Thomas Sowell on best

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.
Thomas Sowell on best

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.
Thomas Sowell on business

Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
Thomas Sowell on education

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 on failure

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
Thomas Sowell on failure

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
Thomas Sowell on freedom

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell on freedom

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
Thomas Sowell on funny

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Thomas Sowell on good

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.
Thomas Sowell on government

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
Thomas Sowell on government

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.
Thomas Sowell on government

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.
Thomas Sowell on government

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Thomas Sowell on history

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.
Thomas Sowell on hope

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
Thomas Sowell on knowledge

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.
Thomas Sowell on knowledge

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
Thomas Sowell on leadership