The forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays, but his chief business in life is to pay.
William Graham SumnerRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Civil liberty guarantees individuals the freedom to utilize their abilities for personal benefit.
This quote by William Graham Sumner emphasizes the importance of civil liberty in enabling individuals to harness their own skills and strengths for their own welfare. It suggests that true freedom is not just the absence of restraint but the legal assurance that one can act in their own self-interest without undue interference from others or the state.
Themes
Civil LibertyFreedomWelfareIndividual RightsEmpowerment
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of personal freedoms in a democratic society.
More from William Graham Sumner
All quotes βIt is the tendency of the social burdens to crush out the middle class, and to force society into an organization of only two classes, one at each social extreme.
William Graham SumnerRead
We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.
William Graham SumnerRead
The Forgotten Man is delving away in patient industry, supporting his family, paying his taxes, casting his vote, supporting the church and the school, reading his newspaper, and cheering for the politician of his admiration, but he is the only one for whom there is no provision in the great scramble and the big divide. Such is the Forgotten Man. He works, he votes, generally he prays β but he always pays β yes, above all, he pays.
William Graham SumnerRead
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.
William Graham SumnerRead
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.
William Graham SumnerRead
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Civilized Man says: I am Self, I am Master, all the rest is other--outside, below, underneath, subservient. I own, I use, I explore, I exploit, I control. What I do is what matters. What I want is what matter is for. I am that I am, and the rest is women & wilderness, to be used as I see fit.
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The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.
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Neither technology nor efficiency can acquire more time for you, because time is not a thing you have lost. It is not a thing you ever had.
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If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
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Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.
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It may have been a comedy, or it may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a blood-letting, and it cost yet another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourselves.
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