William Graham Sumner Quotes

"Property left to a child may soon be lost; but the inheritance of virtue--a good name an unblemished reputation--will abide forever. If those who are toiling for wealth to leave their children, would but take half the pains to secure for them virtuous habits, how much more serviceable would they be. The largest property may be wrested from a child, but virtue will stand by him to the last."
-William Graham Sumner

"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."
-William Graham Sumner in World quotes.

"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

"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

"Men never cling to their dreams with such tenacity as at the moment when they are losing faith in them, and know it, but do not dare yet to confess it to themselves."
-William Graham Sumner

"What we prepare for is what we shall get."
-William Graham Sumner

"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."
-William Graham Sumner

"All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellowmen in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the burden of life from their own shoulders upon those of ot."
-William Graham Sumner in History quotes.

"Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare."
-William Graham Sumner