THOMAS SOWELL

"A society in which such decisions can only be made by males has thrown away half of its knowledge, talents, and insights."

"Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument."

"Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God."

"For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before."

"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."

"The government is indeed an institution, but "the market" is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste."

"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."

"Whenever someone refers to me as someone "who happens to be black," I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on."

"Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous."

"Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world."

"The only people I truly envy are those who can play a musical instrument and those who can eat anything they want without gaining weight."

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."

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

"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves."

"Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric."

"Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers."

"Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism."

"In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t."

"People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth."

"What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less."

"People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything."

"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."

"Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes."

"Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others."

"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."

"The history of which peoples, nations, or civilizations have conquered or enslaved which other peoples, nations, or civilizations has been largely a history of who has been in a position to do so."

"No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days."

"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 people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly."

"What is called an educated person is often someone who has had a dangerously superficial exposure to a wide spectrum of subjects."

"Don't you get tired of seeing so many "non-conformists" with the same non-conformist look?"

"One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten."

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

"Reality does not go away when it is ignored."

"Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty."

"Justice at all costs' is not justice."

"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."

"Intellect is not wisdom."

"It would be very heard, for example, a basketball owner, no matter how racist he was, to try to operate without Blacks. It would be suicidal."

"It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word."

"A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom."

"The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department."

"Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options."

"Economics is more than just a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies."

"Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned."

"The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions."