Thomas Sowell Quotes

I think education is both using and improving knowledge and that changes the whole picture.

Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead.

There is, therefore, wisdom in reserving one's decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed.

The cause of all human evils is the not being able to apply general principles to special cases.

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.

You must learn not only to judge but to act for yourself.

Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportional to my skill to deal with it. Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use it better.

You cannot avoid making judgements but you can become more conscious of the way in which you make them. This is critically important because once we judge someone or something we tend to stop thinking about them or it.

Pressed for rules and verities, All i recolelct are these: Feed a cold and starve a fever. Argue with no true believer. Think-too-long is never-act. Scratch a myth and find a fact.

As long as one does not call his own position into question but regards it as absolute, while interpreting his opponents' ideas as a mere function of the social positions they occupy, the decisive step forward has not yet been taken.

You must never feel badly about making mistakes ... as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do by being right for the wrong reasons.

The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy.

They are not the best students who are most dependent on books. What can be got out of them is at best only material; a man must build his house for himself.

When you have big historic changes, there are going to be ups and downs... There are going to be peaks and valleys. Some things are going to go right. Some things are going to go wrong. But as long as the strategic direction is going in the right way, that's really what you have to judge.

He that judges without informing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judging amiss

All we see of someone at any moment is a snapshot of their life, there in riches or poverty, in joy or despair. Snapshots don't show the million decisions that led to that moment.

And the quality of good judgement is clearly a form of knowledge and skill, as it is because of knowledge and not because of ignorance that we judge well.

We assured Phelan that we were more than happy to let him have you and your menagerie,” Leo retorted. “After that, he said he needed to think.” “About what?” Beatrix demanded. “What is there to think about? Why is it taking him so long to make a decision?” “He’s a man, dear,” Amelia explained kindly. “Sustained thinking is very difficult for them.

Decisions should be based on facts, objectively considered what I call the fact-founded, thought-through approach to decision making.

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.

Knowing where things are, and why, is essential to rational decision making

You can be dogmatic, like Donald Trump, and say don't tell me any of the facts, I have made up my mind, I don't want to hear anything, or you can say, look, trade can be good or it can be bad, depending on the rules.

We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the cause of disaster.

It is a very long and very difficult road from a fact to a conclusion. But it is a million times longer from a theory to a fact.

The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.