108 Quotes by William Graham Sumner

Great captains of industry are as rare as great generals.

If you want a war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men are ever subject, because doctrines get inside a man’s reason and betray him against himself. Civilized men have done their fiercest fighting for doctrines.

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.

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.

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.

The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer’s finger always itches.

I have lived through the best years of this country’s history. The next generations are going to see war and social calamities. I am glad I don’t have to live on into them.

Before the tribunal of nature, a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence, if he can find within himself the powers with which to do it.

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.