Thomas Sowell

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

"Too many Republicans treat English as a second language, with Beltway lingo being their native tongue."

"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive."

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today."

"Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare."

"Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier."

"Civilization is an enormous device for economizing on knowledge."

"Knowledge may be enjoyed as a speculative diversion, but it is needed for decision making."

"It is unnecessary to attempt any general rule as to where the overall balance lies in comparing the respective costs of knowledge in larger and smaller decision-making units. What is important is to understand that (1) the respective cost advantages of the large and small units differ according to the kind of knowledge involved (general versus specific), that (2) most decisions involve mixtures of the two kinds of knowledge, so that the net advantages of the larger and smaller units vary with the kind of decision, and (3) the effectiveness of hierarchical subordination varies with the extent to which the subordinate unit has knowledge advantages over the higher unit."

"While decisions are constrained by the kinds of organizations and the kinds of knowledge involved, the Impetus for decisions comes from the internal preferences and external incentives facing those who actually make the decisions."

"Key indicators require some specified time span during which they are to be tabulated for purposes of reward or penalty. The time span can vary enormously according to the process and the indicator."

"Before attempting to determine the effect of institutions, it is necessary to consider the inherent circumstances, constraints, and impelling forces at work in the environment within which the institutional mechanisms function."

"The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today."

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

"We will do almost anything for our visions, except think about them. The purpose of this book is to think about them."

"Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities."

"Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers."

"One of the grand fallacies of our time is that something beneficial should be subsidized."

"The case for the political left looks more plausible on the surface but is harder to keep believing in as you become more experienced."

"Understanding the limitations of human beings is the beginning of wisdom."

"The key feature of Communist propaganda has been the depiction of people who are more productive as mere exploiters of others."

"In short, it is not merely that Johnny can't read, or even that Johnny can't think. Johnny doesn't know what thinking is, because thinking is so often confused with feeling in many public schools. [emphasis in the original]"

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."

"Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights."

"Envy plus rhetoric equals 'social justice'."

"People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right – especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong."

"History shows that degeneracy can be turned around because it has been done in the past. But the real question today is: Will we turn it around-or is what we are doing likely to make matters worse?"

"Just as any moron can destroy a priceless Ming vase, so the shallow and ill-educated people who run our schools can undermine and destroy from within a great civilization that took centuries of dedicated effort to create and maintain. (27 December 2002)"

"When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."

"I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money."

"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."

"Those who believe that "basic necessities" should belong to people as a matter of right ignore the implication -- that people are to work only for amenities, frivolities, and ego. Will that mean more work or less work? And if less, where are all those "basic necessities" coming from that the government is supposed to hand out?"

"Many of the dangerous things that drivers do are not likely to save them even 10 seconds. When you bet your life against 10 seconds, that is giving bigger odds than you are ever likely to get in Las Vegas."

"Most problems do not get solved. They get superseded by other concerns."

"People who talk incessantly about "change" are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people."

"Maturity is not a matter of age. You have matured when you are no longer concerned with showing how clever you are, and give your full attention to getting the job done right. Many never reach that stage, no matter how old they get."

"One of the most ridiculous defenses of foreign aid is that it is a very small part of our national income. If the average American set fire to a five-dollar bill, it would be an even smaller percentage of his annual income. But everyone would consider him foolish for doing it."

"Letters from teachers continue to confirm the incompetence which they deny. A teacher in Montana says that my criticisms of teachers are "nieve." No, that wasn't a typographical error. He spelled it that way twice."

"If I could offer one piece of advice to young people thinking about their future, it would be this: Don't preconceive. Find out what the opportunities are."

"Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders."

"If you don't believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children."

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

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. Know-it-alls in the school system do not lose one dime or one hour's sleep if their bright ideas turn out to be all wrong, or even disastrous, for the child."

"The greatness of a free-market economy is that it does not depend upon the wisdom of those who happen to be on top at the moment."

"People who think that they are being "exploited" should ask themselves whether they would be missed if they left, or whether people would say: "Good riddance"?"

"To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have cost without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more to produce if they were produced by enterprises operating without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits."

"Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power."

"Activism is a way for useless people to feel important."

"What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away."