Carole Smith > Carole's Quotes

“I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance.”
― Thomas Sowell

“teachers who pander to minority students by turning their courses into rap sessions and ethnic navel-gazing exercises capture their interest and allegiance.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Free-loading at emergency rooms—mandated by government—makes being uninsured a viable option.”
― Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America: and other controversial essays

“Minimum wage laws appear to give low-income workers something for nothing—and appearances are what count in politics. Realities can be left to others, so long as appearances get votes.”
― Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America: and other controversial essays

“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of our own ignorance.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Alaska is much larger than France and Germany—combined. Yet its population is less than one-tenth that of New York City. Keep that in mind the next time you hear some environmentalist hysteria about the danger of “spoiling” Alaska by drilling for oil in an area smaller than Dulles Airport.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Should a professor of accounting or chemistry be fired for using up class time to sound off about homelessness or the war in Iraq? Yes! There is no high moral principle that prevents it. What prevents it are tenure rules that have saddled so many colleges with so many self-indulgent prima donnas who seem to think that they are philosopher kings, when in fact they are often grossly ignorant or misinformed outside the narrow confines of their particular specialty.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Systemic processes tend to reward people for making decisions that turn out to be right—creating great resentment among the anointed, who feel themselves entitled to rewards for being articulate, politically active, and morally fervent.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

“As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today.”
― Thomas Sowell

“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
― Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays

“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.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”
― 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, Is Reality Optional? And Other Essays

“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Intellect is not wisdom.”
― Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

“The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.”
― Thomas Sowell

“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”
― Thomas Sowell

“Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.”
― Thomas Sowell, Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays

“The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.”
― Thomas Sowell

“If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.”
― Thomas Sowell

“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.”
― Thomas Sowell

“Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of “greed” is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned—never to those wanting to take other people’s money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as “greed” on the part of government or the clientele of government.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

“The government is indeed an institution, but "the market" is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste.”
― Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions

“No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

“The New York Times’ long-standing motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” should be changed to reflect today’s reality: “Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology.”
― Thomas Sowell, Dismantling America: and other controversial essays