"The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor.
It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich."
G. K. Chesterton
"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."
Jimmy Carter, September 2015
"It is precisely this — high-powered computers and the swagger of those who operate them — that is causing worries over high-frequency trading’s increasing sway. 'The markets used to be about capital formation,' said Mr. Quast, the consultant. 'Now 80 percent of trading is driven by some form of statistical arbitrage. We are buying into a statistical house of cards that could unravel very quickly.'”
Landon Thomas, Inquiry Stokes Concern over Trading Firms that Shape Markets, 3 September 2009
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
"A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face."
Alexandre Dumas
“We can have democracy in this country or we can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
Louis Brandeis
"God has a way of standing before the nations with judgement, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America 'You are too arrogant! If you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power! And I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still, and know that I am God.'"
