Thomas Sowell Quotes
Governance and Decision-Making
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. The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best. 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.
Economics and the Welfare State
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it. Hence, race, gender, and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses; it is about the egos of the elites. Although the big word on the left is "compassion," the big agenda on the left is dependency. The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state. Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.
Education and Intellectualism
The problem isn't that Johnny can't read or even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling. Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination. Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.
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. Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
Taxation and Inflation
Inflation is the most universal tax of all. It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.
The biggest and most deadly "tax" rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits—food stamps, housing subsidies, and the like—if their income goes up. 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.
Logic, Facts, and Rhetoric
Facts are not liberals' strong suit; rhetoric is. Facts do not speak for themselves; they speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities. Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts, but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision.
Law, Society, and Civilization
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric. If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism. If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them. Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
