Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.
Thomas Sowell
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Sometimes
Spent
Life
Second
People
Half
White
Black
Seems
Firsts
Refusing
First
Define
More quotes by Thomas Sowell
Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.
Thomas Sowell
The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.
Thomas Sowell
When a highly successful leader retires after a long career, it is very unlikely that his successor will be of comparable caliber. Anyone of similar ability and drive would have gone somewhere else, instead of waiting in the wings for years for a chance to show his own leadership.
Thomas Sowell
You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization - including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility, and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain - without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large.
Thomas Sowell
Don't you get tired of seeing so many non-conformists with the same non-conformist look?
Thomas Sowell
In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.
Thomas Sowell
While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.
Thomas Sowell
The economic disasters of socialism and communism come from assuming a blanket superiority of those who want to run a whole economy.
Thomas Sowell
Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.
Thomas Sowell
Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.
Thomas Sowell
Of all ignorance, the ignorance of the educated is the most dangerous. Not only are educated people likely to have more influence, they are the last people to suspect that they don't know what they are talking about when they go outside their narrow fields.
Thomas Sowell
What is called 'capitalism' might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.
Thomas Sowell
One of the most important skills for political success is the ability to make confident assertions of absurdities or lies.
Thomas Sowell
Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?
Thomas Sowell
A passionate commitment to social justice is no substitute for knowing what the hell you're talking about.
Thomas Sowell
The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state.
Thomas Sowell
If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both parents working.
Thomas Sowell
The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.
Thomas Sowell
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.
Thomas Sowell
Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market - contrary to rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell
