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Nine-tenths of our measures for preventing vice are really protective towards it, because they ward off the penalty.

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
Really
Protective
Penalty
Measures
Penalties
Vice
Vices
Tenths
Nine
Ward
Towards
Preventing

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History is only a tiresome repetition of one story.
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It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.
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There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.
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The great force for forging a society into a solid mass has always been war.
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What man ever blamed himself for his misfortune?
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The State cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man
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The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.
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I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation.
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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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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.
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He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself.
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The State, it cannot be too often repeated, does nothing and can give nothing which it does not take from somebody. The Forgotten Man works and votes -generally he prays-but his chief business in life is to pay.
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What we prepare for is what we shall get
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Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine - Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way.
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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.
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The invectives against capital in the hands of those who have it are double-faced, and when turned about are nothing but demands for capital in the hands of those who have it not, in order that they may do with it just what those who have it now are doing with it.
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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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There is no such thing on this earth as something for nothing.
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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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It generally troubles them [the reformers] not a whit that their remedy implies a complete reconstruction of society, or even a reconstitution of human nature.
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