William Graham Sumner

A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be...The law of survival of the fittest was not made by…

— William Graham Sumner

“The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up…

— William Graham Sumner

The criminal law needs to be improved to meet new forms of crime, but to denounce financial devices which are useful and…

— William Graham Sumner

The lobby is the army of the plutocracy.

— William Graham Sumner

There is no boon in nature. All the blessings we enjoy are the fruits of labor, toil, self-denial, and study.

— 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…

— William Graham Sumner

Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine - Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and…

— William Graham Sumner

It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property…

— William Graham Sumner

The truth is that cupidity, selfishness, envy, malice, lust, vindictiveness, are constant vices of human nature.

— William Graham Sumner

If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject...

— William Graham Sumner

It is the supreme test of a system of government whether its machinery is adequate for repressing the selfish undertakings of cliques…

— 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…

— William Graham Sumner

It is not the function of the State to make men happy. They must make themselves happy in their own way, and…

— William Graham Sumner

Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his…

— William Graham Sumner

If any student of social science comes to appreciate the case of the Forgotten Man, he will become an unflinching advocate of…

— William Graham Sumner

“The advantage of some is won by an equivalent loss of others.”

— 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…

— William Graham Sumner

Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know…

— 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…

— William Graham Sumner

The forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay.

— William Graham Sumner

What man ever blamed himself for his misfortune?

— William Graham Sumner

Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone.

— William Graham Sumner

We throw all our attention on the utterly idle question whether A has done as well as B, when the only question…

— William Graham Sumner

The real danger of democracy is, that the classes which have the power under it will assume all the rights and reject…

— William Graham Sumner

Ideals are very often formed in the effort to escape from the hard task of dealing with facts, which is the function…

— William Graham Sumner