JOHN FISKE ‑ To have lived when this prodigious‑ truth (Social Darwinism) was advanced, debated and established was a rare privilege in the centuries. The inspiration of seeing the old isolated mists dissolve and reveal the convergence of all branches of knowledge is something that can hardly be known to the men of a later generation, inheritors of what this age has won.

 HEPHRERT SPENCER ‑ The ultimate development of the ideal man Is logically‑ certain ‑ as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most Implicit faith, for instance that all men will die .... Progress, therefore, is a part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower.

 WILLIAM G. SUMNER ‑ (Many economists   . . . seem to be terrified that distress and misery still remain on earth and promise to remain as long as the vices of human nature remain. Many of them are frightened at liberty, especially under the form of competition, which they elevate into a bug‑a‑bear. They think it bears harshly on the weak. They do not perceive that here "the strong" and the "weak" are terms which admit of no definition unless they are made equivalent to the industrious and the idle, the frugal and the extravagant. They do not perceive, furthermore, that ‑if we do not like the survival of the fittest, we have only one possible alternative, and that Is the survival of the un-fittest. The former is the law of civilization; the latter is the law of anti ‑civilization. We have our choice between the two, or we can go on, as in the past, vacillating between the two, but a third plan ‑the socialist desderatum ‑ a plan for nourishing ‑the un-fittest and yet advancing in civilization, no man will ever find.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), “Wealth,” in the North American Review, June 1889.

While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER –

"I believe the power to make money is a gift of God . . . to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience."