Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes

Look out for the trusts. I hate to leave you here alone with those dreadful corporations, but I can’t very well help it. Be careful of them and don’t let them hurt you while I am away.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

The holder of a monopoly is a sinner and offender.

The Union Pacific Railroad is … a mendacious monopoly.

The importance of supervising the business of great railways and industrial combinations and the necessary investigation and prosecution of unlawful business methods are another necessary tax upon Government which did not exist half a century ago.

[Monopolies and trusts are:] dangerous conspiracies against the public good.

New Yorkers pay a price of untold millions to the great private monopolies every year an excessive price because these monopolies use their power to defeat effective regulation.-

Theodore Roosevelt understood that unregulated monopoly could pose an even greater threat than unrestrained government.

How come there's only one Monopolies Commission?

I made it real clear to the business community - if your plan for innovation is to trick people, is to fool them, is not to tell them the truth about the price, then you're right: I'm going to be right in the way.

We ... deceive ourselves in believing that competition can secure for the public fair treatment in such cases.

There is more danger from monopolies than from combinations of workingmen [unions.]

Monopolies have good sides to them as well as bad sides to them.

The only way you can stop the unregulated monopoly ... from gouging ... is to introduce competition.

[Americans are] trampled to death beneath the iron heel [of monopolies and trusts.]

[The excessive] evils associated with [unregulated] competition [came about] through the shameful neglect of government to fulfill its primary function of protecting equal rights and enforcing justice.]

The issue is whether the trusts or the people shall rule …whether the Railroad [Louisville & Nashville Railroad] is the servant or the master of the people.

The people were told in the last campaign that trusts [corporate monopolies] were a natural evolution, and that the only way to deal with them was to regulate them. The people are tired of being told such things. What they want is the kind of opportunity that formerly existed in this country.

Adequate relief in a monopolization case should put an end to the combination and deprive the defendants of any of the benefits of the illegal conduct, and break up or render impotent the monopoly power found to be in violation of the Act.

If, as you say, the success of commercial society depends upon the full play of competition, why do not you and your confreres turn your attention and direct the shafts of your attacks against the trusts and corporations

All chartered monopolies, not regulated and controlled by law, have proved in that respect detrimental to the public prosperity, corrupting in their management, and dangerous to republican institutions.

The railways of the world, except in those countries where they have been held under the strict regulation and supervision of the government, have proved themselves arbitrary, extortionate and as opposed to free institutions and free commerce between states as were the feudal barons of the middle ages.

I don’t like monopolies when I see them.

Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.

To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.