"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes...
No free government can stand without virtue in the people and a lofty spirit of patriotism, and if the sordid feelings of mere selfishness shall usurp the place which ought to be filled by public spirit, the legislation of Congress will soon be converted into a scramble for personal and sectional advantages...
It is one of the serious evils of our present system of banking that it enables one class of society--and that by no means a numerous one--by its control over the currency, to act injuriously upon the interests of all the others and to exercise more than its just proportion of influence in political affairs."
Andrew Jackson
"Where such a shift in power is in favor of the governing elite, Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse. Most state sponsored murder occurs under the cover of war, revolution, or guerrilla war, or in their aftermath."
R. J. Rummel