Home > Author > William Graham Sumner
101 " That there is a code and standard of mercantile honor which is quite as pure and grand as any military code, is beyond question, but it has never yet been established and defined by long usage and the concurrent support of a large and influential society. The "
― William Graham Sumner , What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
102 " Men of routine or men who can do what they are told are not hard to find; but men who can think and plan and tell the routine men what to do are very rare. They are paid in proportion to the supply and demand of them. "
103 " plutocracy would be a civil organization in which the power resides in wealth, in "
104 " Now who is the Forgotten Man? He is the simple, honest laborer, ready to earn his living by productive work. We pass him by because he is independent, self-supporting, and asks no favors. He does not appeal to the emotions or excite the sentiments. He "
― William Graham Sumner , The Forgotten Man
105 " They are men who have no superiors, by "
106 " One who takes a favor or submits to patronage demeans himself. He falls under obligation. He "
107 " the State cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other man, and this latter must be a man who has produced and saved it. This latter is the Forgotten Man. "
108 " Written more than fifty years ago—in 1883—What Social Classes Owe to Each Other is even more pertinent today than at the time of its first publication. Then the arguments and "movements" for penalizing the thrifty, energetic, and competent by placing upon them more and more of the burdens of the thriftless, lazy and incompetent, were just beginning to make headway in our country, wherein these "social reforms" now all but dominate political and so-called "social" thinking. "
109 " Capital, however, as we have seen, is the force by which civilization is maintained and carried on. The "
110 " our faith has been dangerously weakened—watered down by a blind and essentially false and cruel sentimentalism. "
111 " Sumner invented the phrase is, unfortunately, but typical of the perversion of words and phrases indulged in by our present-day "liberals" in their attempt to further their revolution by diverting the loyalties of individualists to collectivist theories and beliefs. "
112 " Every bit of capital, therefore, which is given to a shiftless and inefficient member of society, who makes no return for it, is diverted from a reproductive use; but "
113 " The reason why man is not altogether a brute is, because he has learned to accumulate capital, to use capital, to advance to a higher organization of society, to develop a completer co-operation, and so to win greater and greater control over Nature. "
114 " All the complaints and criticisms about the inequality of men apply to inequalities in property, luxury, and creature comforts, not to knowledge, virtue, or even physical beauty and strength. But "
115 " The free man in a free democracy, when he cut off all the ties which might pull him down, severed also all the ties by which he might have made others pull him up. He must take all the consequences of his new status. He "
116 " Vice is its own curse. If we let nature alone, she cures vice by the most frightful penalties. "
117 " A free man in a free democracy has no duty whatever toward other men of the same rank and standing, except respect, courtesy, and good-will. We "
118 " In a free state every man is held and expected to take care of himself and his family, to make no trouble for his neighbor, and to contribute his full share to public interests and common necessities. If "
119 " If we pull down those who are most fortunate and successful, shall we not by that very act defeat our own object? Those "
120 " The Forgotten Man works and votes—generally he prays—but his chief business in life is to pay. "