Economics is often referred to as "the dismal science," but few have done more in history to help its reputation than Thomas Sowell.

The 92-year-old economist has authored more than 45 books, including bestsellers such as Basic Economics, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, and Economic Facts and Fallacies. He has also written on politics, sociology, education, race, and much more.

Sowell's work has been cited extensively. Between 1991 and 1995 he was the most cited black economist and the second most cited between 1971 and 1990.

He started his academic career working as an assistant professor at Cornell University and was mentored by Milton Friedman. In 1976 he was offered a position as a Federal Trade Commissioner by the Ford administration but turned it down because of the political games that came with the position. Sowell, through his experience, found the usual bureaucracy and politics in academia and government to be ineffective and exhausting. You'll find that sentiment in many of the quotes below.

Since 1980 he has been a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute where you can still find him today.

Without further delay, here are 30 of Thomas Sowell's best quotes:

"Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence."

"When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."

"In other words, evidence is too dangerous—politically, financially and psychologically—for some people to allow it to become a threat to their interests or to their own sense of themselves."

"People who pride themselves on their 'complexity' and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth."

"Some things must be done on faith, but the most dangerous kind of faith is that which masquerades as 'science.'"

"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."

"Mistakes can be corrected by those who pay attention to facts but dogmatism will not be corrected by those who are wedded to a vision."

"There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously."

"Open-ended demands are a mandate for ever-expanding government bureaucracies with ever-expanding budgets and powers."