Thomas Sowell Quotes

The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about “social justice” all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get reelected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.

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.

The essence of bigotry is denying others the same rights you claim for yourself. Green bigots are a classic example.

Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.

Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice'.

It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.

Civilization is an enormous device for economizing on knowledge.

No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.

The concept of “microaggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.

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.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth — anonymously and posthumously.

The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.

The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about 'social justice' all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.

What all these lofty and vague phrases boil down to is that the court can impose things that the voters don't want and the Constitution does not require, but which are in vogue in circles to which the court responds.

You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization — including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain — without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.