William Graham Sumner Quotes & Sayings

The lobby is the army of the plutocracy. — William Graham Sumner

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

There is no such thing on this earth as something for nothing. — William Graham Sumner

It used to be believed that the parent had unlimited claims on the child and rights over him. In a truer view of the matter, we are coming to see that the rights are on the side of the child and the duties on the side of the parent. — William Graham Sumner

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

Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone. — William Graham Sumner

Hunger, love, vanity, and fear. There are four great motives of human action. — William Graham Sumner

He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself. — William Graham Sumner

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

It generally troubles them [the reformers] not a whit that their remedy implies a complete reconstruction of society, or even a reconstitution of human nature. — William Graham Sumner

We live in a war of two antagonistic ethical philosophies, the ethical policy taught in the books and schools, and the success policy. — William Graham Sumner

The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches. — William Graham Sumner

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

The great hinderance to the development of this continent has lain in the lack of capital. — William Graham Sumner

Labor organizations are formed, not to employ combined effort for a common object, but to indulge in declamation and denunciation, and especially to furnish an easy living to some officers who do not want to work. — William Graham Sumner

Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best of one's self individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one's place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done — William Graham Sumner

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

The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its debt in the penitentiary or the poor house. — William Graham Sumner

It is the greatest folly of which a man can be capable to sit down with a slate and pencil to plan out a new social world. — William Graham Sumner

The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators ... They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens. — William Graham Sumner

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

It is not the function of the State to make men happy. They must make themselves happy in their own way, and at their own risk. The functions of the State lie entirely in the conditions or chances under which the pursuit of happiness is carried on. — William Graham Sumner

Darwin was as much of an emancipator as was Lincoln. — William Graham Sumner

Perhaps they do not recognize themselves, for a rich man is even harder to define than a poor one. — William Graham Sumner

There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue. — William Graham Sumner

Men of routine or men who can do what they are told are not hard to find; but men who can think and plan and tell the routine men what to do are very rare. — William Graham Sumner

Such is the Forgotten Man. He works, he votes, generally he prays - but he always pays - yes, above all, he pays. — William Graham Sumner

A good father believes that he does wisely to encourage enterprise, productive skill, prudent self-denial, and judicious expenditure on the part of his son. — William Graham Sumner

The yearning after equality [in economic outcome] is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for satisfying that yearning which can do aught else than rob A to give to B; consequently all such plans nourish some of the meanest vices of human nature, waste capital, and overthrow civilization. — William Graham Sumner

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

My patriotism is of the kind which is outraged by the notion that the United States never was a great nation until in a petty three months' campaign it knocked to pieces a poor, decrepit, bankrupt old state like Spain. To hold such an opinion as that is to abandon all American standards, to put shame and scorn on all that our ancestors tried to build up here, and to go over to the standards of which Spain is a representative. — William Graham Sumner

One thing must be granted to the rich: they are goodnatured. — William Graham Sumner

Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves. — William Graham Sumner

History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. — William Graham Sumner

The Forgotten Man ... delving away in patient industry, supporting his family, paying his taxes, casting his vote, supporting the church and the school ... but he is the only one for whom there is no provision in the great scramble and the big divide. Such is the Forgotten Man. He works, he votes, generally he prays-but his chief business in life is to pay ... Who and where is the Forgotten Man in this case, who will have to pay for it all? — William Graham Sumner

Now, the plan of plundering each other produces nothing. It only wastes. All — William Graham Sumner

The forgotten man ... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay. — William Graham Sumner

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

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

It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift. — William Graham Sumner

The dogmatic radicals who assail "on principle" the inherited social notions and distinctions are not serving civilization. Society — William Graham Sumner

Can anyone imagine that the masterfulness, the overbearing disposition, the greed of gain, and the ruthlessness in methods, which are the faults of the master of industry at his worst, would cease when he was a functionary of the State, which had relieved him of risk and endowed him with authority? Can anyone imagine that politicians would no longer be corruptly fond of money, intriguing, and crafty when they were charged, not only with patronage and government contracts, but also with factories, stores, ships, and railroads? Could we expect anything except that, when the politician and the master of industry were joined in one, we should have the vices of both unchecked by the restraints of either? — William Graham Sumner

The Forgotten Man ... works, he votes, generally he prays-but he always pays-yes, above all, he pays. He does not want an office; his name never gets into the newspaper except when he gets married or dies. He keeps production going on ... He does not frequent the grocery or talk politics at the tavern. Consequently, he is forgotten ... All the burdens fall on him, or on her, for it is time to remember that the Forgotten Man is not seldom a woman. — William Graham Sumner

Then, again, the ability to organize and conduct industrial, commercial, or financial enterprises is rare; the great captains of industry are as rare as great generals. — William Graham Sumner

The great force for forging a society into a solid mass has always been war. — William Graham Sumner

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

Liberty is an affair of laws and institutions which bring rights and duties into equilibrium. It is not at all an affair of selecting the proper class to rule. — William Graham Sumner

Yet we are constantly annoyed, and the legislatures are kept constantly busy, by the people who have made up their minds that it is wise and conducive to happiness to live in a certain way, and who want to compel everybody else to live in their way. — William Graham Sumner

Who is the Forgotten Man? He is the clean, quiet, virtuous, domestic citizen, who pays his debts and his taxes and is never heard of out of his little circle. — William Graham Sumner

There is no boon in nature. All the blessings we enjoy are the fruits of labor, toil, self-denial, and study. — William Graham Sumner

The advantage of some is won by an equivalent loss of others. — William Graham Sumner

All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow-men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others. — William Graham Sumner

What man ever blamed himself for his misfortune? — William Graham Sumner

But we have inherited a vast number of social ills which never came from Nature. They are the complicated products of all the tinkering, muddling, and blundering of social doctors in the past. — William Graham Sumner

Undoubtedly there are, in connection with each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling, and other financial crimes; that is to say, the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual. — William Graham Sumner

We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty. — William Graham Sumner

If you allow a political catchword to go on and grow, you will awaken some day to find it standing over you, arbiter of your destiny, against which you are powerless. — William Graham Sumner

The aggregation of large fortunes is not at all a thing to be regretted. — William Graham Sumner

It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land. — William Graham Sumner

Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want the government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist. — William Graham Sumner

Every bit of capital, therefore, which is given to a shiftless and inefficient member of society, who makes no return for it, is diverted from a reproductive use; but — William Graham Sumner

A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness. — William Graham Sumner

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

The real danger of democracy is, that the classes which have the power under it will assume all the rights and reject all the duties-that is, that they will use the political power to plunder those-who-have. — William Graham Sumner

Taking men as they have been and are, they are subjects of passion, emotion, and instinct. Only — William Graham Sumner

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 ... I call C the Forgotten Man. — William Graham Sumner

Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare. — William Graham Sumner

Joint-stock companies are yet in their infancy, and incorporated capital, instead of being a thing which can be overturned, is a thing which is becoming more and more indispensable. — William Graham Sumner

I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation. — William Graham Sumner

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

I have before me a newspaper slip on which a writer expresses the opinion that no one should be allowed to possess more than one million dollars' worth of property. — William Graham Sumner

Everywhere you go on the continent of Europe at this hour you see the conflict between militarism and industrialism. You see the expansion of industrial power pushed forward by the energy, hope, and thrift of men, and you see the development arrested, diverted, crippled, and defeated by measures which are dictated by military considerations. — William Graham Sumner

If you ever live in a country run by a committee, be on the committee. — William Graham Sumner

The waste of capital, in proportion to the total capital, in this country between 1800 and 1850, in the attempts which were made to establish means of communication and transportation, was enormous. — William Graham Sumner

In this country, where workmen move about frequently and with facility, the unions suffer in their harmony and stability. It — William Graham Sumner

What we prepare for is what we shall get. — William Graham Sumner

There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors. — William Graham Sumner

If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject ... — William Graham Sumner

Moreover, there is an unearned increment on capital and on labor, due to the presence, around the capitalist and the laborer, of a great, industrious, and prosperous society. — William Graham Sumner

A fool is wiser in his own house than a sage is in another man's house. — William Graham Sumner

If America becomes militant, it will be because its people choose to become such; it will be because they think that war and warlikeness are desirable. — William Graham Sumner

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

There is every indication that we are to see new developments of the power of aggregated capital to serve civilization, and that the new developments will be made right here in America. — William Graham Sumner

In the New Testament it is taught that willing and voluntary service to others is the highest duty and glory in human life ... The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind. — William Graham Sumner

A monarchical or aristocratic system is not immoral, if the rights and duties of persons and classes are in equilibrium, although the rights and duties of different persons and classes are unequal. An — William Graham Sumner

We are to see the development of the country pushed forward at an unprecedented rate by an aggregation of capital, and a systematic application of it under the direction of competent men. — William Graham Sumner

Ideals are very often formed in the effort to escape from the hard task of dealing with facts, which is the function of science and art. There is no process by which to reach an ideal. There are no tests by which to verify it. It is therefore impossible to frame a proposition about an ideal which can be proved or disproved. It follows that the use of ideals is to be strictly limited to proper cases, and that the attempt to use ideals in social discussion does not deserve serious consideration. — William Graham Sumner

If I want to be free from any other man's dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control. — William Graham Sumner

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

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

It would be hard to find a single instance of a direct assault by positive effort upon poverty, vice, and misery which has not either failed or, if it has not failed directly and entirely, has not entailed other evils greater than the one which it removed. — William Graham Sumner

The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature. — William Graham Sumner

It is a beneficent incident of the ownership of land that a pioneer who reduces it to use, and helps to lay the foundations of a new State, finds a profit in the increasing value of land as the new State grows up. — William Graham Sumner

We throw all our attention on the utterly idle question whether A has done as well as B, when the only question is whether A has done as well as he could. — William Graham Sumner

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

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