The Words of Thomas Sowell

Whites walk on eggshells for fear of being called racists, while many blacks are preoccupied with protecting the image of black students, rather than protecting their future by telling the blunt truth. It is understandable that some people are concerned about image, about what in private life might be expressed as: “What will the neighbors think?” But, when your children are dying, you don’t worry about what the neighbors think.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), p. 245

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The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer—and they don't want explanations that fail to give them that.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010), p. 335

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If you’re going to have reparations for slavery, it’s going to be the greatest transfer of wealth back and forth, because the number of Whites who were enslaved in North Africa by the Barbary Pirates exceeded the number of Africans enslaved in the United States.

— Maverick: Jason Riley On The Life And Times Of Thomas Sowell (2020)

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

— Controversial Essays (2002), p. 318

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The barbarians are not at the gates. They are INSIDE THE GATES and have academic tenure, judicial appointments, government grants, and control of the movies, television, and other media.

— Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

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You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated.

— The Fallacy of Redistribution (2012)

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No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk. What do the poor most need? They need to stop being poor. And how can that be done, on a mass scale, except by an economy that creates vastly more wealth? Yet the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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It was the Africans who enslaved their fellow Africans, selling some of these slaves to Europeans or to Arabs and keeping others for themselves. Even at the peak of the Atlantic slave trade, Africans retained more slaves for themselves than they sent to the Western Hemisphere.

— Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005)

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If you don’t believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children.

— Controversial Essays (2002), p. 321

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If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to “change the United States of America,” the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

— Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays (2010), p. 6

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The utterly un-self-critical attitude of many intellectuals has survived many demonstrably vast, and even grotesque, contrasts between their notions and the realities of the world.

— Intellectuals and Society (2009)

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Barack Obama’s political genius is his ability to say things that will sound good to people who have not followed the issues in any detail, regardless of how obviously fraudulent what he says may be to those who have.

— Obama’s ‘Balanced’ Approach (2011)

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Western civilization has survived the invasions of Genghis Khan from the East, the Ottoman Empire from the South, and two world wars originating from within. But whether it will survive its own intellectuals is much more doubtful.

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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Have you ever heard anyone as incoherent as the people staging protests across the country? Taxpayers ought to be protesting against having their money spent to educate people who end up unable to say anything beyond repeating political catch phrases.

— Random thoughts on the passing scene (2011)

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The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

— Knowledge and Decisions (1980), p. 79

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The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy them, and only in the short run.

— Big Lies in Politics (2012)

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Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as ‘science.’

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?

— Is Reality Optional (1993)

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Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected.

— Controversial Essays (2002)

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