William Graham Sumner Quotes - Page 2

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• Any one who believes that any great enterprise of an industrial character can be started without labor must have little experience of life.

  William Graham Sumner

  Believe, Character, Littles

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• Men educated in [the critical habit of thought]are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain.

  William Graham Sumner

  Pain, Believe, Men

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• It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.

  William Graham Sumner

  Crush, Class, Organization

  William Graham Sumner (1943). “The Forgotten Man's Almanac: Rations of Common Sense from William Graham Sumner”

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• The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches.

  William Graham Sumner

  Fingers, Reformers

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.100, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The class distinctions simply result from the different degrees of success with which men have availed themselves of the chances which were presented to them. Instead of endeavoring to redistribute the acquisitions which have been made between the existing classes, our aim should be to increase, multiply, and extend the chances.

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Class, Degrees

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.144, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• I have lived through the best years of this country's history. The next generations are going to see war and social calamities. I am glad I don't have to live on into them.

  William Graham Sumner

  Country, War, Years

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• Whatever capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from somebody else. I would spend any conceivable amount of zeal and eloquence if I possessed it to try to make people grasp this idea. Capital is force. If it goes one way it cannot go another. If you give a loaf to a pauper you cannot give the same loaf to a laborer. Now this other man who would have got it but for the charitable sentiment which bestowed it on a worthless member of society is the Forgotten Man.

  William Graham Sumner

  Mean, Men, Ideas

  William Graham Sumner (1971). “Sumner today: selected essays of William Graham Sumner, with comments by American leaders”

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• If any student of social science comes to appreciate the case of the Forgotten Man, he will become an unflinching advocate of strict scientific thinking in sociology, and a hard-hearted skeptic as regards any scheme of social amelioration. He will always want to know, Who and where is the Forgotten Man in this case, who will have to pay for it all?

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Thinking, Appreciate

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.129, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.

  William Graham Sumner

  Character, Men, Views

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.107, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats, because aristocrats had political influence, in order to corrupt them. Here pensions are given to the great democratic mass, because they have political power, to corrupt them.

  William Graham Sumner

  Order, Political, England

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.123, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.

  William Graham Sumner

  Law, Guarantees, Folly

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.50, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• If we put together all that we have learned from anthropology and ethnography about primitive men and primitive society, we perceive that the first task of life is to live. Men begin with acts, not with thoughts.

  William Graham Sumner

  Life, Learning, Science

  Folkways ch. 1 (1906)

  58 Copy quote

• If you want a war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men are ever subject, because doctrines get inside a man's reason and betray him against himself. Civilized men have done their fiercest fighting for doctrines.

  William Graham Sumner

  Betrayal, War, Fighting

  William Graham Sumner (1963). “Social Darwinism: selected essays”, Prentice Hall

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• The great force for forging a society into a solid mass has always been war.

  William Graham Sumner

  War, Force, Mass

  William Graham Sumner (1914). “The challenge of facts: and other essays”

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• The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.

  William Graham Sumner

  Envy, Lust, Selfishness

  William Graham Sumner (1919). “The Forgotten Man - Rediscovered After Fifty Years ...”

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• Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine - Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way.

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Mind Your Own Business, Liberty

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.104, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue.

  William Graham Sumner

  Virtue, Economy, Devices

  William Graham Sumner (2007). “The Forgotten Man and Other Essays”, p.468, Cosimo, Inc.

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• What man ever blamed himself for his misfortune?

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Misfortunes

  William Graham Sumner (2007). “The Forgotten Man and Other Essays”, p.490, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Furthermore, the unearned increment from land appears in the United States as a gain to the first comers, who have here laid the foundations of a new State.

  William Graham Sumner

  Land, Foundation, United States

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.43, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The millionaires are a product of natural selection ... the naturally selected agents of society for certain work. They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society.

  William Graham Sumner

  Luxury, Wages, Agents

  William Graham Sumner (1914). “The challenge of facts: and other essays”

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• The invectives against capital in the hands of those who have it are double-faced, and when turned about are nothing but demands for capital in the hands of those who have it not, in order that they may do with it just what those who have it now are doing with it.

  William Graham Sumner

  Hands, Order, Justice

  William Graham Sumner (1924). “Selected Essays of William Graham Sumner”

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• Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty.

  William Graham Sumner

  Vices, Nine, Penalties

  William Graham Sumner (2007). “The Forgotten Man and Other Essays”, p.480, Cosimo, Inc.

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• For A to sit down and think, What shall I do? is commonplace; but to think what B ought to do is interesting, romantic, moral, self-flattering, and public-spirited all at once. It satisfies a great number of human weaknesses at once. To go on and plan what a whole class of people ought to do is to feel one's self a power on earth, to win a public position, to clothe one's self in dignity. Hence we have an unlimited supply of reformers, philanthropists, humanitarians, and would-be managers-in-general of society.

  William Graham Sumner

  Thinking, Winning, Class

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.97, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• What is the real relation between happiness and goodness? It is only within a few generations that men have found courage to say that there is none.

  William Graham Sumner

  Real, Men, Generations

  William Graham Sumner (2007). “Folkways: A Study of Mores, Manners, Customs and Morals”, p.9, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The criminal law needs to be improved to meet new forms of crime, but to denounce financial devices which are useful and legitimate because use is made of them for fraud, is ridiculous and unworthy of the age in which we live.

  William Graham Sumner

  Law, Hype, Age

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