Thomas Sowell Quotes

“Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.”

“There is no bigger waste of time than doing 90% of what is necessary.”

“Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.”

“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.”

“All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.”

“It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.”

“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.”

“Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?”

“Neither the depth of despondency nor the height of euphoria tells you how long either will last.”

“If we spend our time with regrets over yesterday, and worries over what might happen tomorrow, we have no today in which to live.”

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

“Whatever we wish to achieve in the future, it must begin by knowing where we are in the present - not where we wish we were, or where we wish others to think we are, but where we are in fact.”

“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.”

“Reality does not go away when it is ignored.”

“Experience trumps brilliance.”

“When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves.”

“People will forgive you for being wrong, but they will never forgive you for being right - especially if events prove you right while proving them wrong.”

“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.”

“It is so easy to be wrong - and to persist in being wrong - when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.”

“The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s own behavior.”

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

“Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.”

“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.”

“Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.”

“The biggest difference between people is between those who are trying to do the right thing - whether or not they succeed - and those for whom the only question is how much they can get away with.”

“How you treat the helpless is the real test of morality.”

“Freedom is unlikely to be lost all at once and openly. It is far more likely to be eroded away, bit by bit, amid glittering promises and expressions of noble ideals.”

“Our fate is matched by the total freedom we have to react to our fate. It is as if we were dealt a hand of cards. Once we have them, we are free to play them as we choose.”

“Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.”

“There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.”

“The only thing better than ”hands-on” experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.”

“Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things.”

“Many bad policies are simply good policies taken too far.”

“Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.”

“Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.”

“One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.”

“Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.”

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

“If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.”