Thomas Sowell Quotes

Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.

Once you start telling people you're famous, they believe you.

I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own.

How vain, without the merit, is the name.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important

Life's about ego. So for someone to talk about my ego, as they are writing their piece about my ego, I'm wondering what they're doing with their ego?

Steve Bannon puts himself above everything.

People tend to take themselves too seriously.

We have all had the experience at some point in our lives of sitting across from someone whose favorite subject is themselves. This is true of nearly everyone to some respect - but for some people, it is a particularly acute problem.

Most of the characteristics which make for success in writing are precisely those which we are all taught to repress ... the firm belief that you are an important person, that you are a lot smarter than most people, and that your ideas are so damned important that everybody should listen to you.

When they get their ego involved, people do things they shouldn't do.

You're special, if you have some power in the world. People are looking at you and they think you're special.

Your own ego is the only trap that I think you can fall into.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

What makes me angry is the idea that people would be going to a movie because of what I said about it. It makes me feel, I don't know, arrogant, self-important, self-aggrandizing, whatever. Like I'm being used.

If someone were to say seriously, "I'm divine," she'd have to be locked up. There are lots of people in mental institutions going around saying "I'm God." But because I'm funny about it, they haven't locked me up yet. And I don't give myself airs, either.

Narcissism, like the other personality disorders, is a condition that's known as ego-syntonic. In other words, the paranoid person really does believe that people are after him, and the narcissist really does believe that he or she is better than or more entitled than other people, and truly doesn't see why that's not the case.

The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

There is a time in our life when we need to strut our stuff and groove on grandiosity, when we need to be viewed as remarkable and rare, when we need to exhibit ourself in front of a mirror that reflects our self-admiration, when we need a parent to function as that mirror.

One way or another the no doubt mad idea entered my mind that my own actions had historic importance and this fantasy (?) made it appear that people who harmed me were interfering with an important experiment.

Using every means possible to show that, although you're just an ordinary human being, you're far above other mortals.

Vanity is the natural weakness of an ambitious man, which exposes him to the secret scorn and derision of those he converses with, and ruins the character he is so industrious to advance by it.