Thomas Sowell Quotes

When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.

You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.

These guys were the real owners of the country, and for them to discuss with this young guy who becomes a member of the government was absolutely unacceptable.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

What is government itself but the great reflection of human nature.

The power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest "functionaire" possesses who wields the coercive power of the state, and on whose desecration it depends whether and how I am allowed to live or to work.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being.

Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. The men become every year more and more creatures of force, masses about central powerhouses. The conflict is no longer between the men, but between the motors that drive men [i.e. governments], and the men who succumb to their own motive forces.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

In the larger life of society, the people are made to submit to the orders of those who were originally meant to serve them—the government and its agents.

Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.

The central factor in most human beings is power. Politics is the manifestation of the quest for power.

I think that, like the show 'Game of Thrones,' our fascination with power struggles is pretty unanimous.

Men are more ready to offend one who desires to be beloved than one who wishes to be feared.

You can never know what is and what is not powerful, but you can always find out what the powerful people are scared of. A state like China looks so powerful, but they are so scared of the Internet, so the Internet is more powerful than them.

Man is born to seek power, yet his actual condition makes him a slave to the power of others.

Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.

The main reason to be opposed to political control of smoking is to keep power -even the smallest and silliest kind of power - out of the hands of ... members of a dangerous class -the class that knows what's good for us better than we do.

Experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of a coercive power.

Governments, whatever their pretensions otherwise, try to preserve themselves by holding the individual down ... Government itself, indeed, may be reasonably defined as a conspiracy against him. Its one permanent aim, whatever its form, is to hobble him sufficiently to maintain itself.

Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.

You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know what you are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! You are the police--the great, fat smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken?