Thomas Sowell

Today I present some quotations from the wisest man I never heard of until this week. I don’t know how I missed Thomas Sowell before, but I consider this post to be the first step toward correcting my indefensible oversight.

Thomas Sowell remains an astute commentator on the national scene at age 80. His website can be found at www.tsowell.com. Some quotes:

• "The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."

• "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."

• "What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long."

• "Many bad policies are simply good policies taken too far. For example, we have taken tolerance to such an extreme that we tolerate the immigration into our country of millions of intolerant people who hate millions of Americans who are already here."

• "If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."

• "One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances."

• "Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."

• "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."

• "If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today."

• "For bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing."

• "The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite."

• "Anyone who is serious about extending the same benefits to others must become serious about developing the same abilities in others—that is, raising them up to the same standards, not bringing the standards down to them."

• "Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good."


It is my hope that sharing these quotes will inspire thought and conversation among people of good will about our situation, the future of our nation, and our American values.

Gryphem