Thomas Sowell Quotes - Page 17

Quotes about:

• Economics is concerned with what emerges, not what anyone intended.

  Thomas Sowell

  Economics, Concerned

  Thomas Sowell (2010). “Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy”, p.68, Basic Books

  17 Copy quote

• Fairness' is one of the great mantras of the left. Since everyone has his own definition of fairness, that word is a blank check for the expansion of government power. What fairness means in practice is that third parties -- busybodies -- can prevent mutual accommodations by others.

  Thomas Sowell

  Party, Mean, Equality

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.225, Hoover Press

  12 Copy quote

• To say the Constitution is living is to say that it's dead.

  Thomas Sowell

  Constitution

  7 Copy quote

• The government is now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s - use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations. To this day, we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s.

  Thomas Sowell

  Agriculture, Government, Tough Times

  8 Copy quote

• Young people in general - and young women in particular - need to understand that they cannot retrieve in their forties the opportunities they threw away in their twenties.

  Thomas Sowell

  Opportunity, People, Age

  5 Copy quote

• The fashionable idiocy that haters must have justifications is one of those ideas that George Orwell said only an intellectual could believe -- because no one else could be such a fool.

  Thomas Sowell

  Believe, Ideas, Intellectual

  10 Copy quote

• If facts, logic, and scientific procedures are all just arbitrarily "socially constructed" notions, then all that is left is consensus--more specifically peer consensus, the kind of consensus that matters to adolescents or to many among the intelligentsia.

  Thomas Sowell

  Peers, Matter, Facts

  7 Copy quote

• Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

  Thomas Sowell

  Race, Ethnicity, Color

  90 Copy quote

• In this era of non-judgmental mush, too many Americans have become incapable of facing the brutal reality of unprovoked hatred, based on envy, resentment and ultimately on a vicious urge to lash out against others for the pain of ones own insignificance. That has been a common thread in things as disparate as ghetto riots, two world wars, and now Islamic terrorism.

  Thomas Sowell

  Pain, War, Islamic

  18 Copy quote

• If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left.

  Thomas Sowell

  Engineering, Knowledgeable Person, Political

  "Don't Be So Sure". www.nationalreview.com. May 16, 2007.

  11 Copy quote

• One of the big differences between Democrats and Republicans is that we at least know what the Democrats stand for, whether we agree with it or not. But, for Republicans, we have to guess

  Thomas Sowell

  Differences, Republican, Bigs

  7 Copy quote

• Implicit in the activist conception of government is the assumption that you can take the good things in a complex system for granted, and just improve the things that are not so good. What is lacking in this conception is any sense that a society, an institution, or even a single human being, is an intricate system of fragile inter-relationships, whose complexities are little understood and easily destabilized.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Littles, Assumption

  Thomas Sowell (1993). “Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

  7 Copy quote

• Subsidies are a shell game, not a net addition to national wealth.

  Thomas Sowell

  Games, Shells, Subsidies

  17 Copy quote

• Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the
  others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Choices, Degrees

  7 Copy quote

• I hate to make predictions, but I think the economy is going to be permanently changed for the worse. I think our foreign policy is going to lead to changes that will be definitely for the worse, particularly if we drift into a nuclear Iran, which I gather that's what the administration is doing.

  Thomas Sowell

  Hate, Thinking, Nuclear Iran

  Source: www.foxnews.com

  15 Copy quote

• People who believe in 'universal health care' show remarkably little interest - usually none - in finding out what that phrase turns out to mean in practice, in those countries where it already exists, such as Britain, Sweden or Canada. For one thing, 'universal health care' in these countries means months of waiting for surgery that Americans get in a matter of weeks or even days.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Believe, Mean

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Time was when people used to brag about how old they were - and I am old enough to remember it.

  Thomas Sowell

  People, Remember, Enough

  Thomas Sowell (1999). “Barbarians Inside the Gates--and Other Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

  4 Copy quote

• Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.

  Thomas Sowell

  Jobs, Mean, Loss

  Interview with John Hawkins, rightwingnews.com. February 8, 2012.

  38 Copy quote

• Someone recently pointed out how much Barack Obama's style and strategies resemble those of Latin American charismatic despots - the takeover of industries by demagogues who never ran a business, the rousing rhetoric of resentment addressed to the masses and the personal cult of the leader promoted by the media. But do we want to become the world's largest banana republic?

  Thomas Sowell

  Latin, Media, Leader

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.100, ReadHowYouWant.com

  14 Copy quote

• Four things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black markets.

  Thomas Sowell

  Black, Quality, Deterioration

  12 Copy quote

• If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback.

  Thomas Sowell

  Civilization, Vision, Arbitrary

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Teaching, Men, Rights

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.328, Hoover Press

  8 Copy quote

• All justice is inherently social. Can someone on a desert island be either just or unjust?

  Thomas Sowell

  Islands, Justice, Desert

  Thomas Sowell (2001). “The Quest for Cosmic Justice”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• Each day, as I take various pills, I realize that without those pills I might not be alive -- and, if I were, life would not be worth living. Yet those who produce these medications are under constant attack from people who produce nothing.

  Thomas Sowell

  Medicine, People, Pills

  10 Copy quote

Page 17 of 25

First

← Prev

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin