95 quotes
Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
Knowledge and Decisions (1980)
If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy.
Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.
Knowledge and Decisions (1980)
The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.
Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups.
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
Envy is always referred to by its political alias, 'social justice'.
Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (2011)
He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results.
A Personal Odyssey (2000)
Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.
A Conflict of Visions (1987)
Knowledge may be enjoyed as a speculative diversion, but it is needed for decision making.
Knowledge and Decisions (1980)
Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
Civilization is an enormous device for economizing on knowledge.
Knowledge and Decisions (1980)
Activism is a way for useless people to feel important.
Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice."
The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)
Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier.
Knowledge and Decisions (1980)
The welfare state shields people from the consequences of their own mistakes, allowing irresponsibility to continue and to flourish among ever wider circles of people.
Free trade may have wide support among economists, but its support among the public at large is considerably less.
"'Global warming' is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible."
Understanding the limitations of human beings is the beginning of wisdom.
Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987)