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41 " In a community where the standard of living is high, and the conditions of production are favorable, there is a wide margin within which an individual may practise self-denial and win capital without suffering, if he has not the charge of a family. That "
― William Graham Sumner , What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
42 " There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors. In "
43 " These classes are sometimes discontented, and sometimes not. Sometimes they do not know that anything is amiss with them until the "friends of humanity" come to them with offers of aid. Sometimes "
44 " The institutions of civil liberty leave each man to run his career in life in his own way, only guaranteeing to him that whatever he does in the way of industry, economy, prudence, sound judgment, etc., shall redound to his own welfare and shall not be diverted to some one else’s benefit. Of course it is a necessary corollary that each man shall also bear the penalty of his own vices and his own mistakes. If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control. "
― William Graham Sumner , The Forgotten Man
45 " Hence it is not upon the masters nor upon the public that trades-unions exert the pressure by which they raise wages; it is upon other persons of the labor class who want to get into the trades, but, not being able to do so, are pushed down into the unskilled labor class. These "
46 " Under all this lies the familiar logical fallacy, never expressed, but really the point of the whole, that we shall get perfect happiness if we put ourselves in the hands of the world-reformer. We "
47 " Our disposition toward the ills which our fellow-man inflicts on us through malice or meddling is quite different from our disposition toward the ills which are inherent in the conditions of human life. "
48 " Physicians, lawyers, and others paid by fees are workers by the piece. To "
49 " A vast amount of "social reform" consists in just this operation. The consequence is that those who have gone astray, being relieved from Nature's fierce discipline, go on to worse, and that there is a constantly heavier burden for the others to bear. Who "
50 " they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They "
51 " Something for nothing is not to be found on earth. "
52 " It is the Forgotten Man who is threatened by every extension of the paternal theory of government. It "
53 " We are agreed that the son shall not be disgraced even by the crime of the father, much less by the crime of a more distant relative. It "
54 " there are yet mixed in our institutions mediaeval theories of protection, regulation, and authority, and "
55 " We cannot now stir a step in our life without capital. We cannot build a school, a hospital, a church, or employ a missionary society, without capital, any more than we could build a palace or a factory without capital. We "
56 " Sentiment is thrown back into private life, into personal relations, and "
57 " Capital is force, human energy stored or accumulated, and "
58 " Except the pauper, that is to say, the man who cannot earn his living or pay his way, there is no possible definition of a poor man. Except "
59 " But the weak who constantly arouse the pity of humanitarians and philanthropists are the shiftless, the imprudent, the negligent, the impractical, and the inefficient, or they are the idle, the intemperate, the extravagant, and the vicious. Now "
60 " Village communities, which excite the romantic admiration of some writers, were fit only for a most elementary and unorganized society. They "