Thomas Sowell Quotes

The most frequent complaint I hear from college students is that professors inject their leftist political comments into their courses even when they have nothing to do with the subject.

I don't know anybody who said, 'I love that teacher, he or she gave a really good homework set,' or 'Boy, that was the best class I ever took because those exams were awesome.' That's not what people want to talk about. It's not what influences people in one profession or another.

The single most important factor in determining [student] achievement is not the color of skin or where they come from. It is not who their parents are or how much money they have. It is who their teacher is.

I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail ghosts in my room.

A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure.

The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others.

This is a large part of the academic profession: to make up complex, subtle arguments that are childishly ridiculous but are enveloped in sufficient profundity that they take on a kind of plausibility.

School feeding not only fills stomachs, but has a proven track record of boosting enrollment, attendance and academic performance. For just pennies a day per child, this program changes lives - and ultimately can impact the futures of poor countries around the world in a profound way.

Nothing so good as a university education, nor worse than a university without its education.

Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys.

Of course, you don't have to have a degree to be rich. You just have to have ideas. Maybe having a degree sets you back, for it stuffs you into tick-tock [the daily grind of work], and perhaps that stifles your creative mind. But the fact is that many millionaires have few educational qualifications of any kind at all. However, they still have knowledge. The difference is, they have knowledge they can sell, and others have the "common knowledge" of tick-tock, which isn't worth as much, if anything at all.

They're all so highly educated, you know. Education is a great shield against experience. It offers so much, ready-made and all from the best shops, that there's a temptation to miss your own life in pursuing the lives of your betters. It makes you wise in some ways, but it can make you a blindfolded fool in others.

Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.

Empty words almost echo within themselves

Recent decades clearly demonstrate that the more secular our Public Schools become the less successful they become academically.

He [said of one or other eminent colleagues] is a very busy man, and half of what he publishes is true, but I don't know which half.

Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning.

My parents were extraordinarily focused on education. It was the topic of every dinner conversation, is are you number one, are you getting all As, if not, why not. You need to do better. So my entire orientation and focus growing up was around doing your best and making sure that you were going to get the best education possible.

I cheated a lot, because I just couldn't sit and do homework. I usually sat next to someone extremely smart.

We send our kids off to school to major in labeling and think the ones who do it best deserve the highest grades.

To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.

I was too worried about the grades and I should have been more worried about learning.

Hungry children are distracted children. We want to make sure nothing gets in the way of our children performing well academically, including hunger.

The only people who need degrees are dentists and brain surgeons.