Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was the leading
United States|American advocate of Social
Darwinism.  He was a professor of sociology at
Yale University. As a sociologist, his major
accomplishments were developing the concepts of
Diffusion (anthropology)|diffusion, folkways
(sociology)|folkways, and ethnocentrism. Sumner's
work with folkways led him to conclude that
attempts at reform were useless. He was a staunch
advocate of laissez-faire economics, arguing that
the practices of the Gilded Age were rather
plutocracy.

==Quotes==

:"There are two chief things with which government
has to deal. They are the property of men and the
honor of women."

:"The practical thrust of Noah Porter's effort was
to prevent Sumner from assigning Spencer's
Principles of Sociology to his classes. In this he
prevailed, Spencer was righteously suppressed.
Porter's success, one imagines, proceeded less
from the force of his argument against Spencer's
acceptance of the Darwiniain thesis -- natural
selection, survival of the fittest -- as a social
and economic axiom than from the unfortunate fact
that he was also the president of the university."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, Annals of an Abiding
Liberal, 130