Quote

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is he confuses it with feeling.

Thomas Sowell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Read
Feelings
Doesn
Confuses
Problem
Johnny
Even
Libertarian
Think
Feeling
Thinking
Politics

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

Image
Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.
Thomas Sowell
Image
How much more of an injustice is it that people who work get more money than people who don't work?
Thomas Sowell
Image
As long as human beings are imperfect, there will always be arguments for extending the power of government to deal with these imperfections. The only logical stopping place is totalitarianism -- unless we realize that tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom.
Thomas Sowell
Image
What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The charge is often made against the intelligentsia and other members of the anointed 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?
Thomas Sowell
Image
Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The anointed don't like to talk about painful trade-offs. They like to talk about happy solutionsthat get rid of the whole problem- at least in their imagination.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Too often the past has been twisted to fit the visions and agendas of the present.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
Thomas Sowell
Image
However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society where others are free.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Barack Obama's vision of America is one in which a President of the United States can fire the head of General Motors, tell banks how to bank, control the medical system and take charge of all sorts of other activities for which neither he nor other politicians have any expertise or experience.
Thomas Sowell
Image
One of the painfully sobering realizations that come from reading history is the utter incompetence that is possible among leaders of whole nations and empires - and the blind faith that such leaders can nevertheless inspire among the people who are enthralled by their words or their posturing.
Thomas Sowell
Image
If you can't beat them or join them, then do something weird. No matter how much the passengers eat, the weight of the plane stays the same. Do you sometimes feel that you are necessary but not sufficient?
Thomas Sowell
Image
Lunches don't get free just because you don't see the prices on the menu. And economists don't get popular by reminding people of that.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Some full professors could more accurately be described as empty professors.
Thomas Sowell
Image
When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
Thomas Sowell
Image
All justice is inherently social. Can someone on a desert island be either just or unjust?
Thomas Sowell