Thomas Sowell Quotes

[People] don't like the government telling them what to do or telling them how to live their lives.

Liberty begets license.

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

We know we need civilization and laws and procedures, but isn't it frustrating? Wouldn't it be great if we could just do what we needed to do?

If you feel the government should leave you alone, you're a Republican. If you think the job of the government is to go push people around and take things for you, then you're a Democrat.

I don't think I should tell you what to do, nor should the government. As long as you enjoy your own personal liberties and don't infringe on the liberties of others, I don't care.

We don't really like rules. We think, in some way, they are an infringement of liberty.

Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.

Every law is an evil for every law is an infraction of liberty.

Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.

We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government--a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.

The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.

I believe you can divide the people in to two basic groups, those who believe government is a necessary good and those who believe it is a necessary evil, those who want government to take care of them, those who want government to leave them alone.

Englishmen never will be slaves; they are free to do whatever the government and public opinion allow them.

Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law.

Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.

It must be admitted that the tendency of the human race toward liberty is largely thwarted, especially in France. This is greatly due to a fatal desire-learned from the teachings of antiquity-that our writers on public affairs have in common: They desire to set themselves above mankind in order to arrange, organize, and regulate it according to their fancy.

I do not believe that the government should have its long nose poked into the private consensual relationships between people.

If we're free to do what we want, why does government always have a plan for us?

When you break the big laws, you do not get liberty; you do not even get anarchy. You get the small laws.

Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline, that those nations historically who have failed to discipline themselves have had discipline imposed by others.

Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.

The only things government can do are regulate and redistribute, prohibit and penalize, confiscate and command. Are these the things that liberty is made of? Somebody else's money and an endless list of Thou Shalt Nots?

But without a caring society, without each citizen voluntarily accepting the weight of responsibility, government is destined to grow even larger, taking more of your money, burrowing deeper into your lives.