Quotes from William Graham Sumner

Each great company will be known as controlled by one master mind. The reason for this lies in the great superiority of personal management over management by boards and committees. This

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

There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors. In

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

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

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

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.

Physicians, lawyers, and others paid by fees are workers by the piece. To

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

they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They

Something for nothing is not to be found on earth.

It is the Forgotten Man who is threatened by every extension of the paternal theory of government. It

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

there are yet mixed in our institutions mediaeval theories of protection, regulation, and authority, and

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

Sentiment is thrown back into private life, into personal relations, and

Capital is force, human energy stored or accumulated, and

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

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

There is no injunction, no "ought" in political economy at all. It

The dogmatic radicals who assail "on principle" the inherited social notions and distinctions are not serving civilization. Society

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. The

The lobby is the army of the plutocracy. An

The philanthropists and humanitarians have their minds all full of the wretched and miserable whose case appeals to compassion, attacks the sympathies, takes possession of the imagination, and excites the emotions. They