Thomas Sowell Quotes

Envy is always referred to by its political alias, 'social justice'.

prices are not costs. Prices are what pay for costs.

What is called “planning” in political rhetoric is the government’s suppression of other people’s plans by superimposing on them a collective plan, created by third parties, armed with the power of government and exempted from paying the costs that these collective plans impose on others.

"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."

There have always been ignorant people, but they haven't always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance. Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes.

Justice at all costs' is not justice.

Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount — and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

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 fail to give them that.

The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.

The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from ‘society,’ rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by ‘society.

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.

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

Envy plus rhetoric equals 'social justice'.

Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.

One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.