William Graham Sumner > Quotes

“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

“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, The Forgotten Man

“There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue.”
― William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man

“The advantage of some is won by an equivalent loss of others.”
― William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man

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

“The lobby is the army of the plutocracy.”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“What man ever blamed himself for his misfortune?”
― William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man

“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, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“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, Essays of William Graham Sumner

“The Forgotten Man is delving away in patient industry, supporting his family, paying his taxes, casting his vote, supporting the church and the school, reading his newspaper, and cheering for the politician of his admiration, but he is the only one for whom there is no provision in the great scramble and the big divide.”
― William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man

“History is only a tiresome repetition of one story.”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X… What I want to do is to look up C… I call him the Forgotten Man… He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.”
― William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man

“Our disposition toward the ills which our fellow-man inflicts on us through malice or meddling is quite different from our disposition toward the ills which are inherent in the conditions of human life.”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“Now who is the Forgotten Man? He is the simple, honest laborer, ready to earn his living by productive work. We pass him by because he is independent, self-supporting, and asks no favors. He does not appeal to the emotions or excite the sentiments. He”
― William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man

“A trades-union is an association of journeymen in a certain trade which has for one of its chief objects to raise wages in that trade. This object can be accomplished only by drawing more capital into the trade, or by lessening the supply of labor in it. To”
― William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man

“Village communities, which excite the romantic admiration of some writers, were fit only for a most elementary and unorganized society. They”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“The pensions in England used to be given to aristocrats who had political power, in order to corrupt them. Here”
― William Graham Sumner, The Forgotten Man

“The reason why man is not altogether a brute is, because he has learned to accumulate capital, to use capital, to advance to a higher organization of society, to develop a completer co-operation, and so to win greater and greater control over Nature.”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“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. It would be unjust to take that profit away from him, or”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“Social improvement is not to be won by direct effort. It is secondary, and results from physical or economic improvements. That”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“If we pull down those who are most fortunate and successful, shall we not by that very act defeat our own object? Those”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“THAT A FREE MAN IS A SOVEREIGN, BUT THAT A SOVEREIGN CANNOT TAKE "TIPS.”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“The function of science is to investigate truth. Science is colorless and impersonal. It”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“There is no injunction, no "ought" in political economy at all. It”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“Sumner invented the phrase is, unfortunately, but typical of the perversion of words and phrases indulged in by our present-day "liberals" in their attempt to further their revolution by diverting the loyalties of individualists to collectivist theories and beliefs.”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“When, rather, were his name and interest ever invoked, when, upon examination, it did not plainly appear that somebody else was to win—somebody who was far too "smart" ever to be poor, far too lazy ever to be rich by industry and economy?”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“unless restrained by checks and guarantees. There is an insolence of wealth, as there is an insolence of rank. A plutocracy might be even far worse than an aristocracy. Aristocrats”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“Aristocrats have always had their class vices and their class virtues. They have always been, as a class, chargeable with licentiousness and gambling. They have, however, as a class, despised lying and stealing. They”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

“distribution of rewards and punishments between those who have done their duty and those who have not.”
― William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other