Thomas Sowell Quotes

What is the point of competing for a trophy if everyone gets a trophy?

Don't feel entitled to anything you didn't sweat and struggle for.

[Referring to political leaders:] Since they take the risks, they need the laurels.

I don't think anybody deserves anything than what they already have because I believe everyone gets what they deserve.

All these people who think they deserve free health care, or a job, or a plasma screen TV, simply because they radiate heat at 98.6 degrees, or because they were born in a certain place, or because they have a certain skin color - it's all bunk. There's no such thing as a 'just' wage. There's only what you earn.

The world is not a meritocracy, as much as we may like to pretend that it is. And we have a long way to go before we really reward people based on their own merit.

We are not entitled to success we have to earn it

Grace is opposed to earning, but not to effort.

Our modern democratic ideal is based on the hope that inequalities will be based on merit more than inheritance or luck.

I had always been taught that life was the other way around -- that you had to make sure you got what was coming to you . . .

Liberals love to strike generous, humanitarian poses with other people's lives.

When a gift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment.

Money and power come as a byproduct of things well done.

I, personally, would be shocked if we went to the end of the tape now and I didn't have at least one... Look, even if I don't get one directly, eventually they're just going to have to give me one when I get old. So no matter how you slice it, I'm getting one.

To those critics who see capitalism as a system of inegalitarian, oppressive structures, its defenders have vaunted its ability to recognize and encourage what they call individual merit and asserted not only the desirability but also the inevitability of differential reward, of earned privilege, so to speak.

The idea that we need to “pay our dues” is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap.

Giving out crowns to everyone will not make a nation of kings.

You're either an activist or an inactivist. I want to stop this.

Just as at the Olympic games it is not the handsomest or strongest men who are crowned with victory but the successful competitors, so in life it is those who act rightly who carry off all the prizes and rewards.

If I work on a movie for two months, I should be able to dance on as many tables as I want to.

Let none presume To wear an undeserved dignity. O that estates, degrees, and offices Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!

Life responds to deserve and not to need.

The arrogance that accompanies merit offends us even more than the arrogance of people who are lacking in merit: since merit itself offends us.

Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.