903 Quotes by Thomas Sowell

High tax rates that people don’t actually pay do not bring the government as much revenue as lower tax rates that they do pay.

A passionate commitment to social justice is no substitute for knowing what the hell you’re talking about.

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

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup.

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.

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking – or lack of thinking.

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.

Top colleges turn out extraordinary graduates because they take in extraordinary freshmen. That tells very little about what happened in the intervening four years, except that it did not ruin these individuals completely. It tells even less about what would have happened if these same extraordinary people had been educated elsewhere. Whether a given individual will do better, either educationally or financially, by going to a bigname college is very doubtful. Hard.

Too many people – some of them judges – seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.