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Then, again, the ability to organize and conduct industrial, commercial, or financial enterprises is rare the great captains of industry are as rare as great generals.

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
Ability
Industrial
Great
Organize
Commercial
Conduct
Rare
Enterprise
Enterprises
Financial
Generals
Industry
Captains

More quotes by William Graham Sumner

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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 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
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The yearning after equality [in economic outcome] is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for satisfying that yearning which can do aught else than rob A to give to B consequently all such plans nourish some of the meanest vices of human nature, waste capital, and overthrow civilization.
William Graham Sumner
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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.
William Graham Sumner
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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
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There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue.
William Graham Sumner
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We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.
William Graham Sumner
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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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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
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What we prepare for is what we shall get
William Graham Sumner
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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.
William Graham Sumner
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We live in a war of two antagonistic ethical philosophies, the ethical policy taught in the books and schools, and the success policy.
William Graham Sumner
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Undoubtedly there are, in connection with each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling, and other financial crimes that is to say, the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual.
William Graham Sumner
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The great force for forging a society into a solid mass has always been war.
William Graham Sumner
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A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be...The law of survival of the fittest was not made by man, and it cannot be abrogated by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest.
William Graham Sumner
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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
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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.
William Graham Sumner
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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.
William Graham Sumner
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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.
William Graham Sumner
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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