The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.
— Thomas Sowell
Most people who read “The Communist Manifesto” probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives, and who nevertheless spoke boldly in the name of “the workers.” Similar offspring of inherited wealth have repeatedly provided the leadership of radical movements, with similar pretenses of speaking for “the people.”
— Thomas Sowell
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.
— Thomas Sowell
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.
— Thomas Sowell
When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, ‘there ought to be a law,’ you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.
— Thomas Sowell
Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.
— Thomas Sowell
If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. .
— Thomas Sowell
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
— Thomas Sowell
The real minimum wage is zero.
— Thomas Sowell
What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.
— Thomas Sowell
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
— Thomas Sowell
Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.
— Thomas Sowell
I wish that some way could be found to add up all the staggering costs imposed on millions of ordinary people, just so a relative handful of self-righteous environmental cultists can go around feeling puffed up with themselves.
— Thomas Sowell
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
— Thomas Sowell
One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.
— Thomas Sowell
What is called ‘capitalism’ might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and the capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.
— Thomas Sowell
Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
— Thomas Sowell
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
— Thomas Sowell
Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational “excellence,” I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.
— Thomas Sowell
Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.
— Thomas Sowell
If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
— Thomas Sowell
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.
— Thomas Sowell
Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from.
— Thomas Sowell
Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.
— Thomas Sowell
Too much of what is called “education” is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
— Thomas Sowell
