Quotes by Thomas Sowell

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.

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.

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.

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

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.

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.

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.

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

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.

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.

Too much of what is called education is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new solution to societys problems.

“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.”