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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
Living
Owes
House
Pays
Find
Generally
Men
Debt
Life
Notion
World
Pay
Start
Poor
Penitentiary

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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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History is only a tiresome repetition of one story.
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Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone.
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In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats, because aristocrats had political influence, in order to corrupt them. Here pensions are given to the great democratic mass, because they have political power, to corrupt them.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject.
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Everywhere you go on the continent of Europe at this hour you see the conflict between militarism and industrialism. You see the expansion of industrial power pushed forward by the energy, hope, and thrift of men, and you see the development arrested, diverted, crippled, and defeated by measures which are dictated by military considerations.
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We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.
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Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.
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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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Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty.
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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.
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