Thomas Sowell Quotes

Most fatal, most hateful of all things is bullying.... Sensual bullying of course is fairly easily detected. What is more dangerous is ideal bullying. Bullying people into what is ideally good for them.

The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.

Coercion is the basis of every law in the universe.

If you wanted to remold people, you had to break them down first.

It's easier to control people when they're afraid.

Pleasure can be used to enslave a people just as effectively as pain.

For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument.

I'm told I'm very charming when people do what I want.

In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture.

What is common to our societies is the development into a managed mass society, with big bureaucracy, managing people. The Russians do it by force. We do it by persuasion.

And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?

Force rules the world-not opinion; but it is opinion that makes use of force.

The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

Power-over is resorted to time without number because people will not wait for the slower process of education.

Freedom... refer[s] to a social relationship among people-namely, the absence of force as a prospective instrument of decision making. Freedom is reduced whenever a decision is made under threat of force, whether or not force actually materializes or is evident in retrospect.

Besides what has been said, people are fickle by nature; and it is a simple to convince them of something but difficult to hold them in that conviction; and, therefore, affairs should be managed in such a way that when they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force.

Manipulating people, that's what I'm good at

[It is a basic principle of a tyrant] to unarm his people of weapons, money and all means whereby they resist his power.

Jane! will you hear reason?' (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear) 'because, if you won't, I'll try violence.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

In truth, there never was any remarkable lawgiver amongst any people who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would not have been accepted by the people; for there are many good laws, the importance of which is known to be the sagacious lawgiver, but the reasons for which are not sufficiently evident to enable him to persuade others to submit to them; and therefore do wise men, for the purpose of removing this difficulty, resort to divine authority.

I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

A portion of the multitude must ever be coerced.

He who feeds you, controls you

India always changes people, and I have been no exception