Quotes from One of My Heroes
Thomas Sowell (born 30 June 1930), is an American economist, political writer, and commentator, generally from a socially conservative and economically laissez faire perspective. He is currently a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science. Conservative British author Paul Johnson has described Sowell as “America’s leading philosopher”.
Quotes from the Man
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
“‘Entitlement’ is not only the opposite of achievement, it undermines incentives to do all the hard work that leads to achievement. It is the people who were born and raised in the welfare state atmosphere who seem to have great difficulty finding jobs.”
“The next time some academics tell you how important ‘diversity’ is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.”
“The real minimum wage is zero [unemployment].”
“The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.”
“Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.”
“Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.”
“Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them. It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
