William Graham Sumner
William Graham Sumner
William Graham Sumnerwas a classical liberalAmerican social scientist. He taught social sciences at Yale, where he held the nation's first professorship in sociology. He was one of the most influential teachers at Yale or any major schools. Sumner was a polymath with numerous books and essays on American history, economic history, political theory, sociology, and anthropology. He introduced the term "ethnocentrism" to identify the roots of imperialism, which he strongly opposed. He was a spokesman against imperialism and in favor...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
William Graham Sumner quotes about
The lobby is the army of the plutocracy.
The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its 'debt' in the penitentiary or the poor house.
History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. Persons and classes have sought to win possession of the power of the State in order to live luxuriously out of the earnings of others
Great captains of industry are as rare as great generals
It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.
It is a beneficent incident of the ownership of land that a pioneer who reduces it to use, and helps to lay the foundations of a new State, finds a profit in the increasing value of land as the new State grows up.
Labor organizations are formed, not to employ combined effort for a common object, but to indulge in declamation and denunciation, and especially to furnish an easy living to some officers who do not want to work.
One thing must be granted to the rich: they are goodnatured.
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.
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.
We live in a war of two antagonistic ethical philosophies, the ethical policy taught in the books and schools, and the success policy.
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.
It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land.
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.