Thomas Sowell Daily

“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.” — Thomas Sowell

“Wherever you get enough far left people in power, you can find a similar willingness to force everyone into collectivist conformity at all costs.” — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell on engineers vs intellectuals: “The engineer is judged by the end product. If he builds a building that collapses, it doesn’t matter how brilliant his idea was—he’s ruined.” “Conversely, if an intellectual has an idea for rearranging society and that ends in disaster, he pays no price at all.”

Thomas Sowell: “It’s important that we have equality before the law. But to talk in terms of equality of capabilities is madness.”

“If I were rich, I would have a plaque made up, and sent to every judge in America, bearing a statement made by Adam Smith more than two and a half centuries ago: ‘Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.’” — Thomas Sowell

“The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices—paid by others.” — Thomas Sowell

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” — Thomas Sowell

Bingo. This is precisely why I have explained that the engineering and business schools are less likely to be parasitized by dreadful ideas because reality serves as an auto-corrective feedback loop.

“One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans—anything except reason.” — Thomas Sowell

“Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries. Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his ‘basic rights.’” — Thomas Sowell

“For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.” — Thomas Sowell

“Obama has an absolute talent for saying things that make no sense—yet not only sound plausible, but inspiring.” — Thomas Sowell

“Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes.” — Thomas Sowell

“The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals’ expansion of the welfare state.” — Thomas Sowell

“Virtually everybody is worse off than somebody else, if only in one dimension, so there are nearly unlimited opportunities to pander to people’s sense of injustice, victimhood and entitlement.” — Thomas Sowell

“There have always been ignorant people, but they haven’t always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance.” — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell on affirmative action: “There are various laws and policies that benefit one group at the expense of another. Affirmative action has the distinction of being one that harms everybody, though in different ways.”

“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?” — Thomas Sowell

“I had as much opportunity to become an NBA star as Michael Jordan had. It just happens that there were some differences in skill.” — Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell: “Back in my old neighborhood, there was a special contempt for the kind of guy who was always trying to get two other guys to fight each other.” “Today, it is considered a great contribution to society to incite consumers against producers, tenants against landlords, women against men, and the races against each other.”