William Graham Sumner Quotes
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A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be...The law of survival of the fittest was not made by man, and it cannot be abrogated by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest.
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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.
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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.
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A fool is wiser in his own house than a sage is in another man's house.
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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.
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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.
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The forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay.
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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.
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The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.
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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.
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What we prepare for is what we shall get
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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.
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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.
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There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.
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History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. Persons and classes have sought to win possession of the power of the State in order to live luxuriously out of the earnings of others
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The great hindrance to the development of this continent has lain in the lack of capital.
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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.
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What man ever blamed himself for his misfortune?
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Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty.
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History is only a tiresome repetition of one story.
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It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.
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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.
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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.
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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.