William Graham Sumner

“The forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay.”

“If you ever live in a country run by a committee, be on the committee.”

“The great hinderance to the development of this continent has lain in the lack of capital.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Joint-stock companies are yet in their infancy, and incorporated capital, instead of being a thing which can be overturned, is a thing which is becoming more and more indispensable.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“The aggregation of large fortunes is not at all a thing to be regretted.”

“Labor organizations are formed, not to employ combined effort for a common object, but to indulge in declamation and denunciation, and especially to furnish an easy living to some officers who do not want to work.”

“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.”

“Moreover, there is an unearned increment on capital and on labor, due to the presence, around the capitalist and the laborer, of a great, industrious, and prosperous society.”