Thomas Sowell Quotes

Thomas Sowell is an American economist and social theorist who is currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Sowell was born in North Carolina but grew up in Harlem, New York. He dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. ...more

Birth: June 30, 1930

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

Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.

Topic(s): Art , Desire , Interest

If it were possible to enforce a ban on lying, a ghastly silence would fall over the city of Washington.

Topic(s): Lying , Silence , Ghastly

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.

Topic(s): World , Past , Social

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

Topic(s): Technology , Growing , Intellectual

One of the few compensations for growing old is accumulating memories and sharing them with others.

Topic(s): Compensation , Growing Old , Growing Older

If you have a right to respect, that means other people don’t have a right to their own opinions.

Topic(s): People , Ifs , Mean

The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer – and they don’t want explanations that do not give them that.

Topic(s): People , Giving , Reason

Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?

Topic(s): Stage , Responsible , Absurdity

One of the biggest taxes is one that is not even called a tax — inflation. When the government spends money that it creates, it is transferring part of the value of your money to themselves.