Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, social theorist, and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Born in North Carolina, Sowell grew up in Harlem, New York. Due to financial issues and deteriorated home conditions, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and later served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. Upon returning to the United States, Sowell enrolled at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in 1958. He received a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1959, and earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.
Few professors would dare to publish research or teach a course debunking the claims made in various ethnic, gender, or other ‘studies’ courses.
I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals’ imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.
Being willing to donate the taxpayers’ money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is.
A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.
Actually lowering the cost of insurance would be accomplished by such things as making it harder for lawyers to win frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies.
People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking – or lack of thinking.
Over the generations, black leaders have ranged from noble souls to shameless charlatans.
It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new ‘solution’ to society’s ‘problems.’
All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.
Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.
A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.
Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.
Our schools and colleges are turning out people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.
Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.