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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.

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
Dreams
Faith
Moment
Tenacity
Moments
Confess
Dream
Cling
Never
Sunset
Men
Dare
Losing

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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.
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The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.
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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.
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What we prepare for is what we shall get
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One thing must be granted to the rich: they are goodnatured.
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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.
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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.
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There is no boon in nature. All the blessings we enjoy are the fruits of labor, toil, self-denial, and study.
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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.
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There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.
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It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land.
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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.
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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.
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The aggregation of large fortunes is not at all a thing to be regretted.
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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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There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue.
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We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.
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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.
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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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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.
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