Thomas Sowell Thinking Quotations

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

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.

As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking.

Not since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time, educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think but how to think. Today, their role is far too often to teach students what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of 'race, class and gender.'

When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is 'control.' That is what the political left is all about, as you can see by the incessant creation of new restrictions in places where they are strongly entrenched in power, such as San Francisco or New York.

It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic.

It is amazing how many people think they are doing blacks a favor by exempting them from standards that others are expected to meet.

I hate to think that someday Americans will be looking at the ruins of their cities and saying that this happened because their leaders were afraid of the word unilateral.

Barack Obama has done more than anyone else to promote the dangerous illusion that we can choose whether to have a war or not. But our enemies have already made that choice. Retired Marine Corps General James Mattis said: “No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it's over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote“.

People who think that they are being exploited should ask themselves whether they would be missed if they left, or whether people would say: Good riddance?

Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational "excellence," I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.

It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.

I hate to make predictions, but I think the economy is going to be permanently changed for the worse. I think our foreign policy is going to lead to changes that will be definitely for the worse, particularly if we drift into a nuclear Iran, which I gather that's what the administration is doing.

One of the problems with trying to help underdogs, especially with government programs, is that they and everyone else start to think of them as underdogs, focusing on their problems rather than their opportunities. Thinking of themselves as underdogs can also dissipate their energies in resentments of others, rather than spending that energy making the most of their own possibilities.

Too many people - some of them judges - seem to think that freedom of speech means freedom from consequences for what you have said. If you believe that, try insulting your boss when you go to work tomorrow. Better yet, try insulting your spouse before going to bed tonight.

A recent poll shows that a majority of blacks, whites, Asians and Hispanics do not think the Census should be classifying people as black, white, Asian and Hispanic.

Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.

Whatever we wish to achieve in the future, it must begin by knowing where we are in the present- not where we wish we were, or whee we wish others to think we are, but where we are in fact.

Perhaps people who are gushing over the Obama Cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under Sharia law.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Think things, not words." In words, many see a need for "social justice" to override "the dictates of the market." In reality, what is called "the market" consists of human beings making their own choices at their own cost. What is called "social justice" is government imposition of the notions of third parties, who pay no price for being wrong.

Think about it: What the busybodies are saying is that third parties like themselves -- who are paying nothing to anybody -- should be determining how much somebody else should be paying those who work for them.

Let's face it, most of us are not half as smart as we may sometimes think we are-- and for intellectuals, not one-tenth as smart.