Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Never in the history of the world have corporations and monopolies been allowed to exist and thrive and extort money from the people as they are doing right now under our very noses.

Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.

Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.

Selfish men, and this country is not without them, men whose mounting bankrolls loom larger than your happiness, corporations without souls and without virtue, those fearful that this government might impinge on what they have grown to regard as its immemorial right of exploitation will whisper against us. They will call us radicals. They will say that this is the first step on the road to socialism.

What we call Monopoly is Business at the end of its journey. The concentration of wealth, the wiping out of the middle classes, are other names for it. To get it is, in the world of affairs, the chief end of man.

… the rules of big business … have superseded the teachings of our parents and are reducible to a simple maxim: Get a monopoly; let Society work for you: and remember that the best of all business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation”

The building of the transcontinental railroads resulted in an orgy of political corruption. The public lands and the natural resources of coal, of iron, and of timber were lavishly wasted in the great scramble for wealth and material power. The carnival of waste and plunder reached its climax about 1890. Evidences were abundant that the great business interests of the country were controlling the government for their own private benefit. The capitalists who financed the railroads, mines, mills, packing houses, grain elevators, and other great enterprises, received from Congress favors which destroyed competition and enormously increased private fortunes.

The “natural laws of economics” are in fact tools in the hands of the avaricious and the greedy for keeping down and oppressing the laboring classes.

The insurance companies use their economic power to grind down working people..

Our moneyed man … have rallied under the banner of the millionaire, the banker, and the land monopolist, there railroad king, and the false politicians, to effect their purpose.

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker.

There's nothing pure about capitalism.

Whenever people with money have power over people with less money, you have the potential for exploitation.

Combinations [large corporate conglomerates], governed entirely by the law of greed … threaten the integrity of our institutions.

Every government that exists -- or ever existed, or ever will exist -- is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves". Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce.

We should like to see such legislation as would beggar the lot of them and confiscate their roads, lands, rolling stock and all that is theirs.... These men have set themselves apart—have divorced their interests from those of all other classes. They have deliberately antagonized civilization and affronted humanity. Their methods are so exceptional that they can be reached only by exceptional methods. They have presumed on our reluctance to apply them.

Capitalists personally are often the mildest-mannered men that ever shattered a family or drained a workingman of his marrow.

Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.

The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists—they're too greedy.

The bastards broke the People's back with their usury.... Let them die; the People will survive.

Capitalists are no more capable of self sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself by his own bootstraps.

The rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated.

Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways extremely objectionable

... the wrong and evils of the money-piling tendency of our country ... giving all power to the rich and bringing in pauperism.

The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few.