Thomas Sowell takes some of his most popular newspaper columns and examines the broader questions beyond the events which inspired them. One of conservatism's most articulate voices dissects today's most important economic, racial, political, education, legal, and social issues, sharing his entertaining and thought-provoking insights on a wide range of contentious subjects.
Controversial Essays
by Thomas Sowell
Selected Quotes
They say cream rises to the top. However, among government employees, the cream tends to leave after a few years, allowing mediocrity to rise to the top.
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There was a time when we honored those who created the prosperity and the freedom that we enjoy. Today we honor the complainers and sue the creators. Perhaps that is inevitable in an era when we no longer count our blessings, but instead count all our unfulfilled wishes.
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The kind of people who talk about the "root causes" of crime never include leniency.
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There are few ideas more potent than the notion that all your problems are caused by other people and their unfairness to you. That was the royal road to unbridled power for Hitler, Lenin, and Mao—which is to say, millions of human beings paid with their lives for believing it.
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There is nothing egalitarian about lower intellectual standards in our schools. Children from more fortunate homes will get higher standards in those homes. It is the other children who most need some outside source of the things necessary to realize their potential.
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The welfare state is the greatest confidence racket of all time. The government takes your money in taxes and then turns around and spends some of it to give you things. For this, you feel dependent on them, when in fact they are dependent on you.
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There was a time when Americans valued their independence and their privacy—and resented anyone who threatened either. Today, however, we put up with an incredible amount of snooping and hassles from people we could stop from bothering us if we wanted to.
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It is amazing how many of the intelligentsia call it "greed" to want to keep what you have earned, but not greed to want to take away what somebody else has earned, and let politicians use it to buy votes.
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The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.
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Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.
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If there is one common denominator among public school teachers and administrators, it is that the very idea of testing their beliefs against evidence never seems to occur to them. The educational dogmas of the day simply reign supreme until new dogmas come along.
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We have now reached the point where virtually everything that serves black “leaders”—dependency, grievance-hunting, racial hype and paranoia—are major disservices to the cause of advancing blacks, at a time when their opportunities have never been better.
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