Top 15 Thomas Sowell Quotes

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

"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."

It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.

"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."

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.

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

Intellect is not wisdom.

There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

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

Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.

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

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

When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea — in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.