Quotes by Thomas Sowell

“It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.”

“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”

“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.”

“Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.”

“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”

“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.”

“Intellect is not wisdom.”

“What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out?...”

“The staunchest conservatives advocate a range of changes which differ in specifics, rather than in number or magnitude, from the changes advocated by those considered liberalchange, as such, is sim...”

“Clearly, only very unequal intellectual and moral standing could justify having equality imposed, whether the people want it or not, as Dworkin suggests, and only very unequal power would make it p...”

“The power of the intelligentsia is demonstrated not only by their ability to create a general climate of opinion that strikes fear into those who oppose their agenda but also by their ability to cr...”

“Reality does not go away when it is ignored.”

“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 ...”

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

“The monumental tragedies of the 20th century -- a world-wide Great Depression, two devastating World Wars, the Holocaust, famines killing millions in the Soviet Union and tens of millions in China ...”

“No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.”

“Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”

“Despite widespread misconceptions in the United States today that the institution of slavery was based on race, for most of the thousands of years in which slavery existed around the world, it was ...”

“It takes no more research than a trip to almost any public library or college to show the incredibly lopsided coverage of slavery in the United States or in the Western Hemisphere, as compared to t...”

“There have always been ignorant people, but they haven't always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance. Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memori...”