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If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
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
Country
Committee
Libertarianism
Committees
Libertarian
Humorous
Liberty
Running
Live
More quotes by William Graham Sumner
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.
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
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
The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches.
William Graham Sumner
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
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.
William Graham Sumner
Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone.
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
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
I have before me a newspaper slip on which a writer expresses the opinion that no one should be allowed to possess more than one million dollars' worth of property.
William Graham Sumner
The great hindrance to the development of this continent has lain in the lack of capital.
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
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.
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
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
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.
William Graham Sumner
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.
William Graham Sumner
History is only a tiresome repetition of one story.
William Graham Sumner
One thing must be granted to the rich: they are goodnatured.
William Graham Sumner
