Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

When politics degrades itself to political adventurism the nation would be on the calamitous road to inevitable disaster and ruination.

Soon there will be such a horrifying gap between the rich and the poor that chaos will break out and another great civilization will collapse.

Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds.

Luxury and excessive refinements are sure forerunners of the decadence of states, because when all individuals seek their own interests they neglect the public weal

Authority will lead you into ruin.

The inevitable fate of large groups is to perish because of lack of unity.

Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.

The entire empire has sunk into a quagmire of extravagance from which they cannot extricate themselves.

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . 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.

A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism.

It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.

This New World utopia, this promised land, was soon buried under the ashes and cinders that erupted over the Western World in the nineteenth century, thanks tot he resurrection and intensification of all the forces that had originally brought 'civilization' itself into existence. The rise of the centralized state, teh expansion of the bureaucracy and the conscript army, the regimentation of the factory system, the depredations of speculative finance, the spread of imperialism, as in the Mexican War, and the continued encroachment of slavery-all these negative movements not only sullied the New World dream but brought back on a larger scale than ever the Old World nightmares that the immigrants to America had risked their lives and forfeited their cultural treasures to escape.