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.

Sumner is often seen as a proto-libertarian. He was a polymath with numerous books and essays on American history economic history political theory sociology and anthropology. William Graham Sumner (October 30 1840 – April 12 1910) was an American academic and "held the first professorship in sociology" at Yale College.