Thomas Sowell
151 quotes
Biography
"As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking."
"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."
"It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think."
"What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away."
"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
"Too many Republicans treat English as a second language, with Beltway lingo being their native tongue."
"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive."
"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."
"Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare."
"Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier."
"Civilization is an enormous device for economizing on knowledge."
"Knowledge may be enjoyed as a speculative diversion, but it is needed for decision making."
"It is unnecessary to attempt any general rule as to where the overall balance lies in comparing the respective costs of knowledge in larger and smaller decision-making units. What is important is to understand that (1) the respective cost advantages of the large and small units differ according to the kind of knowledge involved (general versus specific), that (2) most decisions involve mixtures of the two kinds of knowledge, so that the net advantages of the larger and smaller units vary with the kind of decision, and (3) the effectiveness of hierarchical subordination varies with the extent to which the subordinate unit has knowledge advantages over the higher unit."
"While decisions are constrained by the kinds of organizations and the kinds of knowledge involved, the Impetus for decisions comes from the internal preferences and external incentives facing those who actually make the decisions."
"Key indicators require some specified time span during which they are to be tabulated for purposes of reward or penalty. The time span can vary enormously according to the process and the indicator."
"Before attempting to determine the effect of institutions, it is necessary to consider the inherent circumstances, constraints, and impelling forces at work in the environment within which the institutional mechanisms function."
"The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today."
"Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric."
"We will do almost anything for our visions, except think about them. The purpose of this book is to think about them."
"Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers."
"One of the grand fallacies of our time is that something beneficial should be subsidized."
"The case for the political left looks more plausible on the surface but is harder to keep believing in as you become more experienced."
"Understanding the limitations of human beings is the beginning of wisdom."
"The key feature of Communist propaganda has been the depiction of people who are more productive as mere exploiters of others."
"In short, it is not merely that Johnny can't read, or even that Johnny can't think. Johnny doesn't know what thinking is, because thinking is so often confused with feeling in many public schools. [emphasis in the original]"