Quotes

The main mark of modern government is that we do not know who governs, de facto any more than de jure. We see the politician and not his backer; still less the backer of the backer; or, what is more important of all, the banker of the backer. Throned above all, in a manner without parallel in all the past, is the veiled prophet of finance, swaying all men living by a sort of magic.

G K Chesterton

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks, and restored to the people to whom it belongs.

Thomas Jefferson

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Thomas Paine, 1776

Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States.

Rep. Dick Cheney (R-Wyoming), October 1996

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office.

H L Mencken

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

President Eisenhower, Farewell address, 1961

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.

H L Mencken