Thomas Sowell Quotes

You can't blame anyone for being cynical about politicians.

I don't think people maybe think that the government does tell them the truth. I think they expect politicians who are going to tell them one thing and then when they get in office do something else.

Promising something that seems popular at the time that you know you're never going to deliver - that's the kind of cynical politics that I don't want any part of.

I've had great pleasure meeting the likes of Newt Gingrich and having a chat with the fellow on a staircase. I found him completely dishonest and totally likeable, because he doesn't care! He knows what a politician is, and he's a perfect embodiment of one.

In politics where immediate success is attained by saying what people can be made to believe, rather than what is demonstrably true, accent is generally placed on the desirable rather than on the possible.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.

Lying is particularly prevalent in democratic states, where leaders need the support of the citizenry in order to execute their policies.

[…] our world is far too indulgent of politicians saying blatantly insincere things.

A willingness by politicians to say what they think the public want to hear, and a willingness by large parts of the public to believe what they are told by populist politicians, has led to a deterioration in our public discourse.

...the West has its share of liars and poseurs, the ablest of whom congregate in government.

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies.

A nation has honor precisely as it has fleas - on this or that body. The statesman who talks of honor - unless he means something else, quite different - is a rogue.

[Donald Trump] is a true republican: he is hypocritical and two-faced, he's a liar, a cheat, and a thief and the more he speaks, the more his real character shows.

In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.

Everybody in politics lies.

Politicians regard the public as a cow to be milked

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests.

Eisenhower's career demonstrated how it is possible to fool all the people all the time...'I may be stupid,' he once said at a press conference, 'but at least I'm sincere!' Actually, he was neither, but it suited his purpose to play the part of the bumbling man of good will who was 'not an expert in these matters' but somehow would do his best.

I want to make sure every House Republican is protected from some kind of dishonest, Democratic edge. So, let me say on the record: any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood.

The problem with every American candidate regarding the presidency, I am not talking only about this campaign or elections, but generally, that they say something during the campaign and they do the opposite after the campaign.

There are some whom the applause of the multitude has deluded into the belief that they are really statesmen.

There's the disingenuous duplicitousness, but you can apply that to every politician, really.

If I was going to lie to you, I'd already be elected.

I was taught very early on that the state can be, and is, a liar and a murderer.