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The forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay.
William Graham Sumner
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William Graham Sumner
Age: 69 †
Born: 1840
Born: October 30
Died: 1910
Died: April 12
Anthropologist
Historian
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Sociologist
University Teacher
Paterson
New Jersey
William Graham
William Grayham
Forgotten
Praying
Vote
Delving
Works
Prays
Pay
Votes
Business
Chief
Men
Chiefs
Life
Generally
More quotes by 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
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
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
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 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
If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject.
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
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
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
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
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
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
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
It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.
William Graham Sumner
What we prepare for is what we shall get
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
A wiser rule would be to make up your mind soberly what you want, peace or war, and then to get ready for what you want for what we prepare for is what we shall get.
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
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
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