Author details
All William Graham Sumner Quotes
Then, again, the ability to organize and conduct industrial, commercial, or financial enterprises is rare; the great captains of industry are as rare as great generals.
William Graham Sumner
76% of people like this quote
I never have known a man of ordinary common-sense who did not urge upon his sons, from earliest childhood, doctrines of economy and the practice of accumulation.
William Graham Sumner
63% of people like this quote
Furthermore, the unearned increment from land appears in the United States as a gain to the first comers, who have here laid the foundations of a new State.
William Graham Sumner
61% of people like this quote
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
61% of people like this quote
It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.
William Graham Sumner
60% of people like this quote
There ought to be no laws to guarantee property against the folly of its possessors.
William Graham Sumner
58% of people like this quote
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
55% of people like this quote
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
53% of people like this quote
It is a beneficent incident of the ownership of land that a pioneer who reduces it to use, and helps to lay the foundations of a new State, finds a profit in the increasing value of land as the new State grows up.
William Graham Sumner
53% of people like this quote
It is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.
William Graham Sumner
52% of people like this quote
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
52% of people like this quote
Perhaps they do not recognize themselves, for a rich man is even harder to define than a poor one.
William Graham Sumner
52% of people like this quote
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.
William Graham Sumner
52% of people like this quote
We throw all our attention on the utterly idle question whether A has done as well as B, when the only question is whether A has done as well as he could.
William Graham Sumner
50% of people like this quote
Related authors