A mere sampling of the wisdom of Thomas Sowell

A mere sampling of the wisdom of Thomas Sowell

Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence they are creating artificial stupidity.

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of “diversity”?

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions that by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

What exactly is your “fair share” of what someone else has worked for?

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. 

You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible. 

A friend from India told me that a countryman of his said “I want to go to America. I want to see a country where poor people are fat.”

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 the fabric of society as a whole.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?

The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution.

Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves.

It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting them from standards that others are expected to meet.

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

The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals’ expansion of the welfare state.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

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.

I’m so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.

The key fallacy of so called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law abiding citizens while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

Our national problems usually do not cause nearly as much harm as the solutions.

People who decry the fact that businesses are in business “just to make money” seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want.

Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state.

It is fascinating to watch politicians come up sith “solutions” to problems that are a direct result of their previous solutions.

The minimum wage law is very cleverly misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero. That is what many inexperienced and low skilled workers receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.

Hilary Clinton said you know it takes a village to raise a child and somebody said it takes a village idiot to believe that.

Some ideas sound so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas sound so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operation of a free market are among the second kind.