Thomas Sowell Quotes About Poverty

Quotes about: Poverty

• Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

  Thomas Sowell

  Heart, Mean, Hands

• The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to “help.”

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Government, Black

• The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from 'society,' rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by 'society'.

  Thomas Sowell

  Sex, Believe, Responsibility

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

• The dominant orthodoxy in development economics was that Third World countries were trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty that could be broken only by massive foreign aid from the more prosperous industrial nations of the world. This was in keeping with a more general vision on the Left that people were essentially divided into three categories - the heartless, the helpless, and wonderful people like themselves, who would rescue the helpless by playing Lady Bountiful with the taxpayers' money.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Heart, Broken

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.72, Hoover Press

• Deep thinkers who look everywhere for the mysterious causes of poverty, ignorance, crime and war need look no further than their own mirrors. We are all born into this world poor and ignorant, and with thoroughly selfish and barbaric impulses. Those of us who turn out any other way do so largely through the efforts of others, who civilized us before we got big enough to do too much damage to the world or ourselves.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Selfish, Ignorance

  Thomas Sowell (1987). “Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays”, William Morrow

• The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits ever since 1994. You would never learn that from most of the media. Similarly you look at those blacks that have gone on to college or finished college, the incarceration rate is some tiny fraction of what it is among those blacks who have dropped out of high school. So it’s not being black; it’s a way of life. Unfortunately, the way of life is being celebrated not only in rap music, but among the intelligentsia, is a way of life that leads to a lot of very big problems for most people.

  Thomas Sowell

  Couple, Rap, School

• Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

  Thomas Sowell

  Rose, Leader, Groups

• Many people believe in eliminating gaps and eliminating poverty. They don't realize that in some sense those two things are antithetical. If you were to double everyone's income, or if everyone's income were doubled naturally over the course of time, then you would reduce poverty significantly but you would have also increased the gap.

  Thomas Sowell

  Believe, Two, People

  "Do No Harm: An Interview With Thomas Sowell". Interview with David Harsanyi, thefederalist.com. January 13, 2015.

• Most Americans living below the official poverty line own a car or truck - and government entitlement programs seldom provide cars and trucks. Most people living below the official poverty line also have air conditioning, color television, and a microwave oven - and these too are not usually handed out by government entitlement programs.
  
  Cell phones and other electronic devices are by no means unheard of in low-income neighborhoods, where children would supposedly go hungry if there were no school-lunch programs. In reality, low-income people are overweight more often than other Americans.

  Thomas Sowell

  Children, School, Mean

  "Dependency and Votes" by Thomas Sowell, www.nationalreview.com. May 24, 2011.

• Those who automatically say that the social pathology of the ghetto is due to poverty discrimination and the like cannot explain why such pathology was far less prevalent in the 1950s, when poverty and discrimination were worse. But there were not nearly as many grievance mongers and race hustlers then.

  Thomas Sowell

  Ghetto, Race, Poverty

• [A]ffirmative action in the United States has made blacks. . .who have largely lifted themselves out of poverty, look like people who owe their rise to affirmative action and other government programs.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, People, United States

• One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with the time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.

  Thomas Sowell

  Dream, Real, War

  Thomas Sowell (2002). “Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

• Child poverty in the United States declined after the work requirement was put in there. People realized that they had to work and people went out and worked and they got off welfare.

  Thomas Sowell

  Children, People, United States

  "Do No Harm: An Interview With Thomas Sowell". Interview with David Harsanyi, thefederalist.com. January 13, 2015.

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