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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The great force for forging a society into a solid mass has always been war. — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
One thing must be granted to the rich: they are goodnatured. — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
“Can anyone imagine that the masterfulness, the overbearing disposition, the greed of gain, and the ruthlessness in methods, which are the faults of the… — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
The waste of capital, in proportion to the total capital, in this country between 1800 and 1850, in the attempts which were made to… — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty. — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
Who is the Forgotten Man? He is the clean, quiet, virtuous, domestic citizen, who pays his debts and his taxes and is never heard… — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its 'debt' in… — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches. — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
Whatever capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from somebody else. I would spend any conceivable amount of zeal and eloquence if I possessed it to try to make people grasp this idea. Capital is force. If it goes one way it cannot go… — William Graham Sumner Copy Share
The yearning after equality [in economic outcome] is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for satisfying that yearning… — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
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… — William Graham Sumner Copy Share Image
![“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…” quote by William Graham Sumner](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/9b4/william-graham-sumner-5011_can-do_the-yearning-after-equality-in-economic_454035.jpg)
