“In your day fully nineteen twentieths of the crime, using the word broadly to include all sorts of misdemeanors, resulted from the inequality in the possessions of individuals; want tempted the poor, lust of greater gains, or the desire to preserve former gains, tempted the well-to-do. Directly or indirectly, the desire for money, which then meant every good thing, was the motive of all this crime, the taproot of a vast poison growth, which the machinery of law, courts, and police could barely prevent from choking your civilization outright.”
Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 19
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Edward Bellamy 58
American author and socialist 1850–1898Related quotes
“Heaven absolves all crimes committed to gain a throne
Once Heaven gives it to us.”
Tous ces crimes d'État qu'on fait pour la couronne,
Le ciel nous en absout alors qu'il nous la donne.
Livie, act V, scene ii.
Cinna (1641)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 1.
July 28, 1788, p. 107.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)
Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 9.
The National Gain, §5, 1765. Here Chydenius could be said to describe the invisible hand eleven years before Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations.
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, p 56
