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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.
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
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More quotes by 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
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
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
The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches.
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
Darwin was as much of an emancipator as was Lincoln.
William Graham Sumner
If any student of social science comes to appreciate the case of the Forgotten Man, he will become an unflinching advocate of strict scientific thinking in sociology, and a hard-hearted skeptic as regards any scheme of social amelioration. He will always want to know, Who and where is the Forgotten Man in this case, who will have to pay for it all?
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
There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.
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
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
There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue.
William Graham Sumner
What we prepare for is what we shall get
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
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
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
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
A fool is wiser in his own house than a sage is in another man's house.
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
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