William Graham Sumner - Life Quotes

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In the New Testament it is taught that willing and voluntary service to others is the highest duty and glory in human life.... The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind.

William Graham Sumner

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

William Graham Sumner

All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow-men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others.

William Graham Sumner

If we put together all that we have learned from anthropology and ethnography about primitive men and primitive society, we perceive that the first task of life is to live. Men begin with acts, not with thoughts.

William Graham Sumner