William Graham Sumner

“The mores can make anything right and prevent condemnation of anything.”

“A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things.”

“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.”

“Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.”

“If I want to be free, I've got to be a slave to principles.”

“The great foe of democracy is not aristocracy, but monopoly.”

“The Forgotten Man... He is the man who is never thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist.”

“It is the greatest folly of which a man can be capable, to sit down with a slate and pencil to plan out a new social world.”

“What the social classes owe to each other is nothing.”

“The state is for individuals, and not individuals for the state.”

“The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go.”

“Men who are in command of capital have a great temptation to kill competition.”

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

“We cannot get a quart out of a pint pot.”