World-renowned American economist, political commentator, academic, senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and author of over 50 books, Thomas Sowell is an intellectual force to be reckoned with.
Classical liberals, libertarians and conservatives have received Sowell's work positively, but he is a thorn in the side of every socialist who thinks that central planning and government control is the most efficient for economic prosperity.
If you're one of the aforementioned socialists, we invite you to read the following quotes by Thomas Sowell.
- I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.
- The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
- Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
- Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.
- Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
- The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.
- Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
- Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
- No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk.
What do the poor most need? They need to stop being poor. And how can that be done, on a mass scale, except by an economy that creates vastly more wealth? Yet the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it.
- It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
- Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.
- The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.
Here's a bonus quote from Dr. Sowell; "reality does not go away when it is ignored."
Ignoring the data and adhering to economically unsound ideas such as socialism is a blatant refusal to see reason and logic, and that free-market capitalism is the superior economic system.
If you enjoyed these quotes, you may also enjoy reading, 'Thomas Sowell is The Cure for Socialist Rhetoric.'
