William Graham Sumner Quotes (9 quotes)

William Graham Sumner: 9 quotes0 likes

Famous William Graham Sumner Quotes

“Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist.”

William Graham Sumner

per Irving Norton Fisher in a speech to the Yale socialists club 1911 http://praxeology.net/WGS-Anarchy.htm.

“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

The Forgotten Man and Other Essays (corrected edition), “The Forgotten Man” 1883 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-the-forgotten-man-and-other-essays-corrected-edition?q=Civil+liberty+is+the+status#Sumner_1225_701.

“It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift.”

William Graham Sumner

"What Social Classes Owe to Each Other", 1883, Ch III http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-what-social-classes-owe-to-each-other.

“The man who started with the notion that the world owed him a living would once more find, as he does now, that the world pays him its debt in the state prison.”

William Graham Sumner

“The Challenge of Facts”, 1914 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914sumner.html.

“You see the expansion of industrial power pushed forward by the energy, hope, and thrift of men, and you see the development arrested, diverted, crippled, and defeated by measures which are dictated by military considerations.”

William Graham Sumner

“The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, speech at Yale 1899 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-boll-11-w-g-sumner-the-conquest-of-the-united-states-by-spain-1898.

“Any prosperity policy is a delusion and a path to ruin. There is no economic lesson which the people of the United States need to take to heart more than that. In the second place the Spanish mistakes arose, in part, from confusing the public treasury with the national wealth.”

William Graham Sumner

"The Conquest of the United States by Spain”, speech at Yale 1899 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-boll-11-w-g-sumner-the-conquest-of-the-united-states-by-spain-1898.

“The history of civil liberty is made up of campaigns against abuses of taxation. Protectionism is the great modern abuse of taxation; the abuse of taxation which is adapted to a republican form of government. Protectionism is now corrupting our political institutions just as slavery used to do.”

William Graham Sumner

Protectionism: the -ism which teaches that waste makes wealth, 1888, paragraph 155 http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-protectionism-the-ism-which-teaches-that-waste-makes-wealth.

“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

“What we prepare for is what we shall get.”

William Graham Sumner

Essays of William Graham Sumner, I: "War", 1903, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/sumner-war-and-other-essays?q=prepare#Sumner_0255_13.