903 Quotes by Thomas Sowell

Nothing is easier than to find some individuals—in any group—who share a given writer’s opinion, and to quote such individuals as if their views were typical.

The concept of “microaggression” is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be “hate speech,” instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them.

The key word among advocates of multiculturalism became “diversity.” Sweeping claims for the benefits of demographic and cultural diversity in innumerable institutions and circumstances have prevailed without a speck of evidence being asked for or given. It is one of the purest examples of arguments without arguments, and of the force of sheer repetition, insistence and intimidation.

To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society”.

Conservatism, in its original sense, has no specific ideological content at all, since everything depends on what one is trying to conserve. In the last days of the Soviet Union, for example, those who were trying to preserve the existing Communist regime were rightly referred to as “conservatives,” though what they were trying to conserve had nothing in common with what was advocated by Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek or William F. Buckley.

Many have blamed the gasoline shortages and long lines at filling stations in 1973 on the Arab Oil embargo of that year. However, the shortages and long lines began months before the Arab oil embargo, right after price controls were imposed.

The people I feel sorry for are those who insist on continuing to do what they have always done but want the results to be different from what they have always been.

Someone with an inborn knack for mathematics or music may be just as productive as someone who was born with lesser talents in these fields and who had to work very hard to achieve the same level of proficiency. However, we reward productivity rather than merit, for the perfectly valid reason that we know how to do it.

The question as to whether flesh-and-blood people of indigenous ancestry today would have been better off had the Europeans not invaded can scarcely be asked, much less answered, because most flesh-and-blood contemporary American Indians would not exist if the Europeans had not invaded, since they are of European as well as indigenous ancestry. Nature is remarkably uncooperative with our moral categories. There is no way to unscramble an egg.