corporations

As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
~ U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 - (letter to Col. William F. Elkins) - Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)

They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.
~ Lord Edward Coke

"criminal," n. A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.
~ Howard Scott

enough & patriotism

Nothing is enough for the person to whom enough is too little.
~ Max Lucado in Grace for the Moment

Patriotism: The last refuge of a scoundrel.
~ Samuel Johnson; definition in his dictionary published in the 18th century

the poor

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Second Inaugural Address, Washington, D.C., January 20, 1937.

money, again

You don't put robbers to work in a bank.
~ American Proverb

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.
~ John Kenneth Galbraith

I hate banks. They do nothing positive for anybody except take care of themselves. They're first in with their fees and first out when there's trouble.
~ Earl Warren (American Republican Governor of California and Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, 1891-1974)

The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor.
~ Helen Keller

A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.
~ Forest E. Witcraft

power, money & war

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of humankind.
~ Adam Smith - The Wealth Of Nations

When troubles come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
~ Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power."
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), 32nd US president

Our economy is facing a moment of great challenge. ... We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis.
~ George W. Bush, September 24, 2008

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
~ Thomas Jefferson: American 3rd US President (1801-09).

seeing the truth

To preserve their [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
~ Thomas Jefferson

When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do. ~ William Blake

The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.
~ Mahatma Gandhi: Indian leader, 1869-1948

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet.
~ Hermann Hesse, German poet and novelist.

power

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.
~ James Baldwin Biography - Fiction Writer, Essayist, Social Critic, 1924-1987

... The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism.
~ Emma Goldman Biography - Anarchist, Feminist, Labor Advocate, 1869-1940

It's amazing how people can get so excited about a rocket to the moon and not give a damn about smog, oil leaks, the devastation of the environment with pesticides, hunger, disease. When the poor share some of the power that the affluent now monopolize, we will give a damn.
~ Cesar Estrada Chavez Biography - Farm Workers' Union Founder, Human Rights Activist

freedom, truth & courage

If “freedom” means purely and simply an uncontrolled power to make money in every possible way, regardless of consequences, then freedom becomes synonymous with ruthless, mindless and absolute exploitation… The psychological root of it is doubtless in the profound dehumanization and alienation of modern Western man, who has gradually come to mistake the artificial value of inert objects and abstractions (goods, money, property) for the power of life itself, and who is willing to place immediate profit above everything else. Money is more important, more alive than life, including the lfe and happiness of his closest and most intimate companions. This he can always justify by a legalistic ethic or a casuistical formula of some sort, but his formulas themselves betray him and eventually lose even the meaning which has been arbitrarily forced upon them.  ~Thomas Merton, re-excerpted & edited from an article that appeared in the Catholic World, December 2008; excerpted originally in the CW, June 1968

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918- ) Russian writer, Soviet dissident, imprisoned 8 years for critizing Stalin in a personal letter, Nobel Prize for Lit., 1970

america

The convention which framed the Constitution of the United States was composed of fifty-five members. A majority were lawyers-not one farmer, mechanic or laborer. Forty owned Revolutionary Scrip. Fourteen were land speculators. Twenty-four were money-lenders. Eleven were merchants. Fifteen were slave-holders. They made a Constitution to protect the rights of property and not the rights of man.  ~ Senator Richard Pettigrew – Triumphant Plutocracy (1922)

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed. I feel, at this moment, more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless. ~Lincoln in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins on November 21, 1864

This great and powerful force-the accumulated wealth of the United States-has taken over all the functions of Government, Congress, the issue of money, and banking and the army and navy in order to have a band of mercenaries to do their bidding and protect their stolen property. ~Senator Richard Pettigrew – Triumphant Plutocracy – Published, January 1, 1922.

It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. ~Dorothy Thompson (1894-1961) – Source: Ladies Home Journal, May 1958

money

We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.  ~Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General

Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy. ~John Pierpont Morgan

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.  ~Thomas Jefferson