Thomas Sowell Quotes

What is right and what is practicable are two different things.

There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.

You are going to make choices and decisions that sometimes aren't going to always work in your favor and they are going to upset some other people.

What matters most is finding practical, pragmatic solutions .... Ideological purity is for partisan extremists.

Everybody trades off in some sense or another.

All advantages are attended with disadvantages.

Difficulties are always there--they will always be there, and I am glad that there are difficulties, for they excite the imagination and the intellect, and you can then find out the means by which you can solve the problem

It ought not to be beyond the intelligence of even the most hidebound local politician to see the benefits of imaginative compromise.

I hope to see no in-fighting and lots of cooperation. We can either all be part of the problem, or part of the solution, but I think we will all work together well on the same team.

Republicans must sell a big-cause, problem-solving vision - low-ego and happy-warrior in tone.

I believe that being conservative means you try to get in to the middle of the fight and try to solve the problem.

The best way to promote and protect opportunity is through collaboration, consensus-building, and pragmatic problem-solving. Throughout nearly 30 years in public service, I have approached tough challenges by making room for as many people as possible around the table in search of common ground.

Choice is a form of compromise, no? So why choose if you can have both?

Creativity is a game changer. That's true of society, in advertising and in life.

Creativity can solve almost any problem.

Sometimes in life you have to make a decision and make sacrifices.

Compromise now, because you'll have to later, anyway, only then you'll have gone through things you'll wish you hadn't.

Trade-offs have been with us ever since the late unpleasantness in the Garden of Eden.

Life is filled with problems to be solved and tensions to be managed. Sometimes it helps to know which is which.

Self-help books for those who believe 'You can have it all' often advise, 'Follow your bliss and money will follow.' With the collapse of the stock markets the reality of trade-offs is more like, 'When you follow your bliss, it's money you'll miss.'

Intelligence looks for what is known to solve problems. Creativity looks for what is unknown to discover possibilities.

Every problem has a creative solution.

The art model of problem solving is incredibly efficient because ideology has no place there.There's only the thing and what the thing needs to be.

I'd describe myself as a pragmatist tinged with idealism.

He knew when to compromise. Yet he never compromised his principles. He was a militant. Yet a militant who knew how to plan, assess concrete situations and emerge with rational solutions to problems.