Thomas Sowell Quotes

What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.

Those close to Mr. Obama say he grows irritated at being misunderstood - not just by opponents who insinuate that he caters to African-Americans, but also by black lawmakers and intellectuals who fault him for not making his presidency an all-out assault on racial disparity.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

If you walk out of a movie that's meant to be about race in our country, and you're feeling good and happy, then that movie didn't tell you all of the truth. It's too big of an issue, and it's too complicated for you to feel good. It's something you should feel like you need to talk about.

I have the utmost respect for Charles Barkley. He was a heck of a ballplayer... When it comes to basketball, please quote Charles Barkley. But when it comes to race in America? Please don't quote Charles Barkley.

What happens to Black Folks today, happens to White Folks tomorrow.

I think there is a big difference between expressing the pain and anger that many African Americans and other people of color may feel versus language that I think now crosses the line and goes into hate.

In spite of what some people claim, we are not in a post-racial era. I think it's still an important issue to bring up.

In short, and let us be clear on it: race is not a card. It determines whom the dealer is, and who gets dealt.

Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual. ...To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American

It really bothers me when people say we live in a postracial America.

I am not sure the issue of race in America will ever be completely solved.

Black Lives Matter was born out of our unwavering love for black people and our undeniable rage over a system that has historically dehumanized black people.

I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism.

No nation has ever prospered or been blessed like the colored people in the South.

A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once, the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.

When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia - which was inappropriate, certainly that . . . to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people.

The patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. ... We have to come to terms with some hard truths about race and justice in America.

The Negro who experiences bitter and agonizing circumstances as a result of some ungodly white person is tempted to look upon all white persons as evil, if he fails to look beyond his circumstances. But the minute he looks beyond his circumstances and sees the whole of the situation, he discovers that some of the most implacable and vehement advocates of racial equality are consecrated white persons.

I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. They are not-in Mississippi. They are not-in Montgomery. That is why I am here today. . . . You want to shut up every colored person who wants to fight for the rights of his people!.

Numbered among our population are some 12,000,000 colored people. Under our Constitution their rights are just as sacred as those of any other citizen. It is both a public and a private duty to protect those rights. The Congress ought to exercise all its powers of prevention and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching, of which the negroes are by no means the sole sufferers, but for which they furnish a majority of the victims.

Negro equality, Fudge!! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?

The conviction that all men are equal by reason of their natural dignity has been generally accepted. Hence racial discrimination can no longer be justified.

No candidate at present is thinking of justice for the Black and the Red and the Brown in this manner. And none of them are showing they will accept to let us go to save America from the Wrath of God. So Black and White have to know America now is in the crosshairs of God Himself, the Great Mahdi.

Has he paid his dues? Is he black enough? John Lewis and I were out there marching and organizing sit-ins back in the '60s so that his children and my children would not have to do it. We would have been failures if had to do the same things we did.