Thomas Sowell
The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.Collection: Women
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.Collection: Amazing
All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting 'the rich' to pay 'their fair share' is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.Collection: Politics
People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.Collection: Leadership
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.Collection: Trust
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.Collection: Knowledge
Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.Collection: Brainy
Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson's administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's brilliant 'whiz kids' tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.Collection: Brainy
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.Collection: Politics
The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: History
People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.Collection: Money
It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new 'solution' to society's 'problems.'Collection: Society
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.Collection: Knowledge
Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.Collection: Government
Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Work
The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up.Collection: Food
Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other 'studies' was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these 'studies' are about propaganda rather than serious education.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Business
Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left - which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study - are not likely to get much attention.Collection: Education
The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.Collection: Government
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 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.Collection: Politics
Just what is it that academics have to fear if they stand up for common decency, instead of letting campus barbarians run amok?Collection: Fear
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.Collection: Failure
Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.Collection: Government
Being willing to donate the taxpayers' money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is.Collection: Money
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.Collection: Truth
In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.Collection: Money
The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.Collection: Best
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.Collection: Freedom
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.Collection: Freedom
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.Collection: Government
Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Power
Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.Collection: Society
Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.Collection: Education
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.Collection: Technology
I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals' imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.Collection: Imagination
The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.Collection: Time
The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.Collection: Government
The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.
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.
If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'
Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.