14 Quotes & Sayings By William Graham Sumner

William Graham Sumner was an American sociologist, historian, economist, and philosopher born in 1841. Sumner was initially trained as an anthropologist before he became interested in sociology. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1871 for his work "Types of Mankind". His most famous work is The Folkways, published in 1911.

1
We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty. William Graham Sumner
2
Liberty is an affair of laws and institutions which bring rights and duties into equilibrium. It is not at all an affair of selecting the proper class to rule. William Graham Sumner
3
The lobby is the army of the plutocracy. William Graham Sumner
4
Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them and know it but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves. William Graham Sumner
5
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
6
Who is the Forgotten Man? He is the clean quiet virtuous domestic citizen who pays his debts and his taxes and is never heard of out of his little circle. William Graham Sumner
7
The forgotten man. He is the clean quiet virtuous domestic citizen who pays his debts and his taxes and is never heard of outside his little circle.... He works he votes generally he prays but his chief business in life is to pay. William Graham Sumner
8
What we prepare for is what we shall get. William Graham Sumner
9
He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself. William Graham Sumner
10
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
11
The waste of capital, in proportion to the total capital, in this country between 1800 and 1850, in the attempts which were made to establish means of communication and transportation, was enormous. William Graham Sumner
12
It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land. William Graham Sumner
13
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