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"It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land."
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"Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in anycommonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if theytend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for whichthey are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the readytalker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage,sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the bodypolitic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admirethe gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to dowrong to the republic."
"Let us remind our leaders that there is no place for personal interests in politics."
"Let the government not be an instructor but a parent who loves and adjusts to the needs of the nation, But remember a parent does what makes things look good to the entire family without segregation."
"When a religious system or a government organizes into a bureaucracy, it is the bureaucracy that incessantly moves all activities increasingly and inevitably towards it's own destruction. The momentum will always become greater than the influence of it's wisest members."
"If a due participation of office is a matter of right how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few by resignation none."
"Responsible government is an off shoot of a culture of personal responsibility."
"If our leaders ignore the rule of law, it is certain that they have broken the social contract. The social contract is not a declaration of a lasting war but of a lasting peace who's regulation is charged by the will of the people under the rule of law. I pray the we are wise enough to keep our moral compass."
"One obvious palliative of the evils of democracy in its present form would be to encourage much more publicity and initiative on the part of civil servants. They ought to have the right, and, on occasion, the duty, to frame Bills in their own names, and set forth publicly the arguments in their favor."
"Every word of etatistic thought is contradicted by the doctrines of sociology and economics; this is why etatists endeavour to prove that these sciences do not exist. In their opinion, social affairs are shaped by the State. To the law, all things are possible; and there is no sphere in which State intervention is not omnipotent."
Explore more quotes by William Graham Sumner
"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."
"Perhaps they do not recognize themselves, for a rich man is even harder to define than a poor one."
"I have before me a newspaper slip on which a writer expresses the opinion that no one should be allowed to possess more than one million dollars' worth of property."
"The criminal law needs to be improved to meet new forms of crime, but to denounce financial devices which are useful and legitimate because use is made of them for fraud, is ridiculous and unworthy of the age in which we live."
"We are to see the development of the country pushed forward at an unprecedented rate by an aggregation of capital, and a systematic application of it under the direction of competent men."
"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."
"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."
"Any one who believes that any great enterprise of an industrial character can be started without labor must have little experience of life."
"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."
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