Thomas Sowell Quotes

Economics is a social science, not a physical science.

There are different groups of people in your life that you behave slightly differently with. You behave one way with your family. You behave in a different way with your work colleagues. You behave differently with your friends from the movie club, your fitness instructor - all subtly different personas.

I was obsessed with learning about social behaviors. I remember explaining to my mom that kids on my soccer team were fighting because of dyads and triads.

Economics is a good degree to have but the subject is very theoretical at Cambridge and I found it frustrating that you can't apply a lot of the models to particular circumstances.

It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles.

Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us.

The greatest realities are physical and economic, all the subtleties of life come afterward.

Gossip is the social mosquito.

Economics as a discipline has in effect become the study of capitalism. The two are taken as the same subject.

Once you break the social norm and create a new social norm, all of a sudden it can stay with us for a long time.

Everybody's strange everywhere. Most of the trick of being a social animal is pretending you're not. But who do you fool? Nobody worth talking to.

Those who yearn for the end of capitalism should pray for government by men who believe that all positive action is inimical to what they call thoughtfully the fundamental principles of free enterprise.

So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.

Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.

Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them.

As the science of economics...exploded the fallacies of every brand of utopianism, it was outlawed and stigmatized as unscientific.

The Trouble with liberals is twofold: They have a horrible blind spot with respect to moral principles and they have an abysmal understanding of economic principles.

Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda popon stoops, and have passed a judgment, the gist of which is: "This is deplorable! If these people had decent homes and a more private or bosky outdoor place, they wouldn't be on the street!" That judgment represents a profound misunderstanding of cities. It makes no more sense than to drop in at a testimonial banquet in a hotel and conclude that if these people had wives who could cook, they would give their parties at home.

the principles of political economy have elevated the working class above the place they ever filled before.

Some writers maintain arithmetic to be only the only sure guide in political economy; for my part, I see so many detestable systems built upon arithmetical statements, that I am rather inclined to regard that science as the instrument of national calamity.

I would rather be seated between any two women than any two men at a dinner party.

Behavior, n. Conduct, as determined, not by principle, but by breeding.

For Marx, 'pure' economic theory, that is economic theory which abstracts from a specific social structure, is impossible.

You can use principles of the free market to drive social change.

Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one.