The Thomas Sowell Reader Quotes

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“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.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“The term “liberal” originally referred politically to those who wanted to liberate people—mainly from the oppressive power of government. That is what it still means in various European countries or in Australia and New Zealand. It is the American meaning that is unusual: People who want to increase the power of government, in order to accomplish various social goals.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Alaska is much larger than France and Germany—combined. Yet its population is less than one-tenth that of New York City. Keep that in mind the next time you hear some environmentalist hysteria about the danger of “spoiling” Alaska by drilling for oil in an area smaller than Dulles Airport.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Government “planning” is not an alternative to chaos. It is a pre-emption of other people’s plans.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“A very distinct pattern has emerged repeatedly when policies favored by the anointed turn out to fail. This pattern typically has four stages: STAGE 1. THE “CRISIS”: Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a “crisis,” even though all human situations have negative aspects, and even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a “crisis” has in fact already been getting better for years. STAGE 2. THE “SOLUTION”: Policies to end the “crisis” are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims as absurd and “simplistic,” if not dishonest. STAGE 3. THE RESULTS: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z. STAGE 4. THE RESPONSE: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as “simplistic” for ignoring the “complexities” involved, as “many factors” went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors. Examples of this pattern are all too abundant. Three will be considered here. The first and most general involves the set of social welfare policies called “the war on poverty” during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, but continuing under other labels since then. Next is the policy of introducing “sex education” into the public schools, as a means of reducing teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases. The third example will be policies designed to reduce crime by adopting a less punitive approach, being more concerned with preventive social policies beforehand and rehabilitation afterwards, as well as showing more concern with the legal rights of defendants in criminal cases.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“The essence of bigotry is denying others the same rights you claim for yourself. Green bigots are a classic example.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Have you gone crazy, Lefty?” “No. On the contrary, I have become educated.” “Sometimes that’s worse, these days.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Guns are completely inappropriate for the kind of sheep-like people the anointed envision or the orderly, prepackaged world in which they are to live. When you are in mortal danger, you are supposed to dial 911, so that the police can arrive on the scene some time later, identify your body, and file reports in triplicate.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“teachers who pander to minority students by turning their courses into rap sessions and ethnic navel-gazing exercises capture their interest and allegiance.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“The federal government could make a Rolls Royce affordable for every American, but we would not be a richer country as a result. We would in fact be a much poorer country, because of all the vast resources transferred from other economic activities to subsidize an extravagant luxury. [...] To have politicians arbitrarily change the price tags, so that prices no longer represent the real costs, is to defeat the whole purpose [of an economy: to make trade-offs, with the prices of a market economy representing the costs of producing things].
Reality doesn't change when the government changes price tags. Talk about "bringing down health care costs" is not aimed at the costly legal environment in which medical science operates, or other sources of needless medical costs. It is aimed at price control, which hides costs rather than reducing them. [...]
Whether in France during the 1790s, the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik revolution, or in newly independent African nations during the past generation, governments have imposed artificially low prices on food. In each case, this led to artificially low supplies of food and artificially high levels of hunger.
People who complain about the "prohibitive" cost of housing, or of going to college, for example, fail to understand that the whole point of costs is to be prohibitive. [...] The idea [that "basic necessities" should be a "right"] certainly sounds nice. But the very fact that we can seriously entertain such a notion, as if we were God on the first day of creation, instead of mortals constrained by the universe we find in place, shows the utter unreality of failing to understand that we can only make choices among alternatives actually available.
[...] Trade-offs [as opposed to solutions] remain inescapable, whether they are made through a market or through politics. The difference is that price tags present all the trade-offs simultaneously, while political 'affordability' policies arbitrarily fix on whatever is hot at the moment. That is why cities have been financing all kinds of boondoggles for years, while their bridges rusted and the roadways crumbled.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“If you are serious about education, then you need to start a lot earlier than fifteen years old to give each child a decent shot at life in the real world, as distinguished from make-believe equality while in school. Ability grouping or “tracking”—so hated by the ideological egalitarians—is one of the best ways of doing that.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“our brightest kids have been going downhill even faster than our average kids.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“But his was an understandable mistake, given how little attention is paid to accuracy in history and how often history is used as just a propaganda tool in current controversies.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“The people I feel sorry for are those who insist on continuing to do what they have always done but want the results to be different from what they have always been.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Looking at old photographs makes it hard for me to believe that I was ever that thin physically. And remembering some of the things I did in those days makes it hard to believe that I was ever that thin mentally.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“1:THE “CRISIS”: Although Chief Judge Bazelon said in 1960 that “we desperately need all the help we can get from modern behavioral scientists”69 in dealing with the criminal law, the cold facts suggest no such desperation or crisis. Since the most reliable long-term crime data are on murder, what was the murder rate at that point? The number of murders committed in the United States in 1960 was less than in 1950, 1940, or 1930—even though the population was growing over those decades and murders in the two new states of Hawaii and Alaska were counted in the national statistics for the first time in 1960.70 The murder rate, in proportion to population, was in 1960 just under half of what it had been in 1934.71 As Judge Bazelon saw the criminal justice system in 1960, the problem was not with “the so-called criminal population”72 but with society, whose “need to punish” was a “primitive urge” that was “highly irrational”73—indeed, a “deep childish fear that with any reduction of punishment, multitudes would run amuck.”74 It was this “vindictiveness,” this “irrationality” of “notions and practices regarding punishment”75 that had to be corrected. The criminal “is like us, only somewhat weaker,” according to Judge Bazelon, and “needs help if he is going to bring out the good in himself and restrain the bad.”76 Society is indeed guilty of “creating this special class of human beings,” by its “social failure” for which “the criminal serves as a scapegoat.”77 Punishment is itself a “dehumanizing process” and a “social branding” which only promotes more crime.78 Since criminals “have a special problem and need special help,” Judge Bazelon argued for “psychiatric treatment” with “new, more sophisticated techniques” and asked: Would it really be the end of the world if all jails were turned into hospitals or rehabilitation centers?79”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“The next time you see a bum leaving drug needles in a park where children play or urinating in the street, you are seeing your tax dollars at work and the end result of the vision of the anointed.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“No small part of the existing problems of the public schools is that the school day is already so long and boring, with so little to challenge the ablest students. Moreover, many average and below-average students who have lost all interest are retained by compulsory attendance laws for years past the point where their presence is accomplishing anything other than providing jobs for educators.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Far from using their intellectual skills to clarify the distinction between statistical categories and flesh-and-blood human beings, the intelligentsia have instead used their verbal virtuosity to equate the changing numerical relationship between statistical categories over time with a changing relationship between flesh-and-blood human beings (“the rich” and “the poor”) over time, even though data that follow individual income-earners over time tell a diametrically opposite story from that of data which follow the statistical categories which people are moving into and out of over time.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“The idea that students can determine relevance in advance is one of the many counterproductive notions to come out of the 1960s.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“People who have already been out in the real world, practicing for years whatever their particular specialty might be, have some basis for determining which things are relevant enough to go into a curriculum to teach those who follow. The idea that students can determine relevance in advance is one of the many counterproductive notions to come out of the 1960s.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“millions of people died in the war “to make the world safe for democracy”—a war that led to autocratic dynasties being replaced by totalitarian dictatorships that slaughtered far more of their own people than the dynasties had?”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values, and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which “a duty to die” is just one.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Few skills are so well rewarded as the ability
to convince parasites that they are victims.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“To say that merit may be the same is not to say that productivity is the same. Nor can we logically or morally ignore the discrepancy in the relative urgency of those who want their shoes repaired versus those in need of brain surgery. In other words, it is not a question of simply weighing the interest of one income recipient versus the interest of another income recipient, while ignoring the vastly larger number of other people whose well-being depends on what these individuals produce. If”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader