Thomas Sowell Quotes

Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.

Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.

In just about every area of society, there's nothing more important than ethics.

Character is much easier kept than recovered.

America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou.

Our concerns aren't always appropriate or morally elevated.

If principles don't determine what you are going to pass or do, then power will.

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.

When government tries to serve as a parent or teacher or a moral guide, individuals may be tempted to discard their own sense of responsibility, to argue that only government must help people in need. If we've learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot federalize virtue.

Freedom is not the liberty do anything whatsoever. It is the freedom to do good

Law is not self-executing. Unfortunately, at times its execution rests in the hands of those who are faithless to it. And even when its enforcement is committed to those who revere it, law merely deters some human beings from offending, and punishes other human beings for offending. This does not make men good. This task can be performed only by ethics or religion or morality.

Law alone cannot make men see right.

Law is, for the most part, positive or mandatory. It prescribes certain duties which I am to do as the condition of my civic protection. Conscience is, for the most part, negative or prohibitory in its operation. It sets before me certain evils to be undone or repented of. Thus law aims to exalt its subject, or make him conventionally righteous; while conscience aims to humiliate him

We’re not here to bring politics to our morality, but to bring morality to our politics.

Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.

I have huge respect for whistle-blowers, people who stand up against their bosses and losing their careers, just for truth and justice.

If society is a ship, it appears to many to be firmly at anchor in moral waters. Perhaps this isn't so.

I have to be honest with myself, and make sure I am doing things the right way.

Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

It is the task of theologians to establish the limits of justice and injustice regarding the intrinsic goodness or wickedness of an act; it is the task of the observer of public life to establish the relationships of political justice and injustice, that is, of what is useful or harmful to society.

There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.