Thomas Sowell 25 of His Best Quotes

Thomas Sowell is a genius who is phenomenal at explaining economics in a way the average person can understand and has brilliant insights into our culture and into the way liberals think. If you enjoy the timeless wisdom in these quotes, you may enjoy reading his books as well. Although you probably will never run across a bad one, Basic Economics and The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy are particularly insightful. Since Thomas Sowell is officially retired, we don’t hear from him as often as we have in past years. So, with that in mind, it seems appropriate to trot out some of his greatest hits in honor of his 91st birthday.

25) “There are three questions that would destroy most of the arguments on the left: 1. Compared to what? 2. At what cost? 3. What hard evidence do you have? There are very few ideas on the left that can pass all three of those kinds of things.”


23) “The feeling that the government should ‘do something’ has seldom been based on a comparison of what actually happens when government does and when it does not ‘do something.’”

Trending: The 15 Best Conservative News Sites On The Internet

22) “Anyone who wants reparations based on history will have to gerrymander history very carefully. Otherwise, practically everybody would owe reparations to practically everybody else.”



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


17) “The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First, you take people’s money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

16) “The only reward for putting up with craziness is more craziness.”

15) “If there is not equality of outcomes among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected—or assumed—when conditions are not nearly so comparable?”


13) “Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions – and the way most businesses make decisions if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.”


11) “Civilization has been aptly called a ‘thin crust over a volcano.’ (Liberals) are constantly picking at that crust.”


9) “The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other (liberals) that their theories and the policies based on them lack common sense. But the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?”







