Quote

Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.

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
Rare
Everywhere
Knowledge
Ideas

More quotes by Thomas Sowell

Image
In this era of political correctness, some people seem unaware that being squeamish about words can mean being blind to realities.
Thomas Sowell
Image
There is no talent so ardently supported, nor generously rewarded, as the ability to convince parasites they are victims.
Thomas Sowell
Image
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.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Relevance is not something you can predict. It is something you discover after the fact.
Thomas Sowell
Image
We're not a socialist country, because the socialists believe in government ownership in the means of production, but the fascists believe that the government should have private ownership and the politicians should tell people how to run the businesses. So that's the route we seem to be going.
Thomas Sowell
Image
To say the Constitution is living is to say that it's dead.
Thomas Sowell
Image
What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials.
Thomas Sowell
Image
People who talk incessantly about change are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people.
Thomas Sowell
Image
It doesnt matter what you do if you dont do what matters. If you do what matters it doesnt matter what you do.
Thomas Sowell
Image
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?
Thomas Sowell
Image
The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Whenever someone refers to me as someone who happens to be black, I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.
Thomas Sowell
Image
You don't send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like 'shooting an unarmed child,' when that 'child' was beating him bloody.
Thomas Sowell
Image
Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The difference between a policy and a crusade is that a policy is judged by its results, while a crusade is judged by how good it makes its crusaders feel.
Thomas Sowell
Image
What makes it possible for politicians to do so many things that are economically counterproductive is that neither the public nor the media know enough of the basics to understand what's wrong with what they're saying.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.
Thomas Sowell
Image
No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.
Thomas Sowell
Image
The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.
Thomas Sowell