The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country. – John Adams
“Whatever is not nailed down is mine.” This is the motto of the exploiter. “Whatever can be pried loose is not nailed down.” This is the second maxim in a country where people are rich, caring little in their present prosperity what shall become of the future. – David Starr Jordan, 1910
Seeing is believing, and if an American success is to count for anything in the world it must be clothed in the raiment of property. As often as not it isnt the money itself that means anything; it is the use of money as the currency of the soul. – Lewis H. Lapham
Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that the Union was preserved. – Herbert Croly
