Thomas Sowell Quotes

We need a better strategy for poor people...because what we're doing isn't working.

More people are on food stamps today because of Obamas policies than ever in history. I would like to be the best paycheck president in American history. ... And so Im prepared if the NAACP invites me, Ill go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.

I see an America where poverty is defeated by opportunity, not enabled by a government check.

I will go to the NAACP convention, and explain to the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps.

I want to help communities put welfare recipients to work right now, without delay, repairing schools, making their neighborhoods clean and safe, making them shine again. There's lots of work to be done out there. Our cities can find ways to put people to work and bring dignity and strength back to these families.

You can't help the poor by becoming one of them.

People can change their own lives, provided they have the right kind of institutional support. They're not asking for charity, charity is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the creation of opportunities like everybody else has, not the poor people, so bring them to the poor people, so that they can change their lives.

I'm opposed to giving people money for doing nothing.

My development parameter is very simple. It is about how the poorest of the poor can benefit from development.

Now, you might say – “But why should we pay people for doing what they’re supposed to do?” It’s a fair question – but think of it this way: Every other anti-poverty program that’s been tried has failed to get the national poverty rate below 11 percent... Why shouldn’t we experiment with a program built around the one strategy that has proven time and again to work wonders – capitalism?

Conservatives are better talking about opportunity and growth in the abstract, while liberals talk more about poor people. Right now we [americans] need a good, optimistic, conservative opportunity ideology that is totally geared toward lifting up the poor. That's what I most want to see in candidates.

I want people to make a lot more than $9. $9 is not enough. The problem is that if you can't do that by mandating it in the minimum wage laws. Minimum wage laws never worked in terms of helping the middle class attain more prosperity.

Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty.

I think the right-wingers have to buddy up to the fact that either the minimum wage has to go up, and people get enough money to live, or you're always going to have people needing government assistance. You can't have it both ways.

There's a ton of stuff we can do to help the economy and help the American people, and the aspirational working class of the American people.

The poor is the central focus of my economic agenda. The poor should be strengthened in such a way that they get the willingness to defeat poverty. By helping the poor make ends meet while they remain in poverty is also one of the ways. I am not saying right or wrong but it's one of the ways.

People don't need to become more aware of poverty - they need to know how to end it.

I will use the rest of my life to help the poor overcome the problems confronting them - poverty is the greatest challenge facing humanity. That is why I build schools; I want to free people from poverty and illiteracy.

Jews who have been guilty of exploiting the black people in America, economically, civically, and otherwise, hide behind - hide their guilt by accusing The Honorable Elijah Muhammad of being anti-Semitic, simply because he teaches our people to go into business for ourselves and take over the economic leadership in our own community.

Global inequality is such an abstract concept, simply because there is no global government. Telling people in rich countries who have had no increase in real incomes, stagnant median wages and so on, that on the other hand global inequality is going down because people who are much poorer than them are getting richer - it's something that maybe they would like in an abstract sense, because everyone is happy there are fewer poor Chinese, but you may not be as happy if these Chinese are taking your job.

Any strategy to reduce intergenerational poverty has to be centered on work, not welfare--not only because work provides independence and income but also because work provides order, structure, dignity, and opportunities for growth in people's lives.

Child poverty in the United States declined after the work requirement was put in there. People realized that they had to work and people went out and worked and they got off welfare.

I used to be called the "Green Jack Kemp" because of my promotion of entrepreneurial and work-based solutions for poor people.

How would the US be different today if people coming off the boat were greeted with a welfare check instead of a shovel?

Since Day 1, we have maintained that ours is a Government dedicated to the poor and will continue to work dedicatedly for the welfare of the poor.