Anatole France Quotes
In every well-governed state wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
France, Anatole. Penguin Island. Translated by A. W. Evans, John Lane, 1909.
One dramatic example of this principle is that India at the end of the 20th century had more billionaires than the United States did.
These three principles not only were the philosophical and political lynchpins of the Chinese Republican efforts but were incorporated into the first line of the national anthem of the Republic of China which became the government of Taiwan when the Chinese Communists won the mainland and the rest of China. The nationalists only delivered one of the three: Nationalism and that with much corruption. The Communists delivered two with less corruption and thus won China.
In modern America, there are two political views of this notion. The one held by a small majority of the population is Trenchard’s quotation taken literally. Their view is that there if the is no way to maintain liberty if there is too wide a gap between the rich and the rest of the population. The second variant, held by many conservatives limits the equality to equality of opportunity. They are loathe to take any position that says that any gap between the rich and the remainder of the citizens might be too large. They would particularly disagree with the first sentence of another Trenchard quotation, {627024}.
Anatole France was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament".
