Thomas Sowell Quotes

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

Even when candidates have degrees from Harvard and Yale, they try to run as the candidate of the common man.

What's a good metaphor for a Harvard student? A talking, gold-plated pile of manure, wearing a fleece.

I thought I was kind of a hotshot because I had had two years of work experience at Morgan Stanley, and I was about to get my Stanford M.B.A.

I don't say 'Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.

There are people who are surprised at my politics and being a conservative and the rest of it. But the truth of the matter is, to my knowledge, I have never been overlooked or turned down for anything that I wanted to do that was being offered to me.

I went to school and made good grades and went to college. So I was afforded an opportunity through my parents' hard work that most people don't have.

I want to prove that you don't have to come from Oxford University or Rada - and you don't have to have parents that support you - to succeed.

The anti-elitist values in America, I think, are very destructive to education.

I was probably the first kid in my high school to go to Yale. I applied almost as a lark. Then, when I got there, I was the dumbest person in your class.

Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.

Circumstances have rarely favored great men. A lowly beginning is no bar to a great career. The boy who works his way through college may have a hard time of it, but he will learn how to work his way in life, and will usually take higher rank in school and in after life than his classmate who is the son of a millionaire.

I went to Duke, which is... a Top Five school. Not community college. But whatever.

I'm a graduate of Princeton, and I just want to say you don't have to go to an Ivy League school to be on the Supreme Court.

I don't come from an Ivy League school or anywhere else.

The Tea Party people say they're angry about socialism, but maybe they're really angry about capitalism. If there's a sense of being looked down upon, it's that sense of failure that's built into a system that assures everyone they can make it to the top, but then reserves the top for only a tiny fraction of the strivers.

Better educated than wealthy

It is a privileged school with beautiful buildings in a beautiful setting. But the only justification for privilege is that it should help people develop themselves to the full. We are elitist, but not exclusive. And I'm not in ashamed in the least of being elitist. All that means is aiming at the highest standards you can achieve.

Our country has become the land of opportunity to those born without inheritance.

Your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

All of yez that went to Yale or Cornell raise your right hands.... The Yales and Cornells can vote for him. The rest of yez vote for me.

America is still the land of opportunity, and hard work is still a pathway to success.

Success breeds inequality, and you don't want to choke off success.

Truth is, only the useless get to the top in this country.

The meek may inherit the earth, but they don't get in to Harvard.