"The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign - that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole - some effective power over their corporate use. In order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and be accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"We're watching the transformation of many democracies around the world into what are essentially feudal states. They are not feudal in the sense that people are wheeling hand-pulled carts through muddy streets as in medieval days, but that the government increasingly runs solely for the benefit of those with the greatest wealth. And it makes little difference to the ordinary citizen whether the wealthiest are old-style feudal lords or today's very large corporate interests."

- Thom Hartmann

"By intensity of hatred nations create in themselves the characters they imagine in their enemies. Hence it is that all passionate conflicts result in the interchange of characteristics."

- George William Russell

"As militarism, the arrogance of power, and the euphemisms required to justify imperialism inevtiably conflict with America's democratic structure of government and distort its culture and basic values, I fear that we will lose our country. If I overstate the threat, I am sure to be forgiven because future generations will be so glad I was wrong. The danger I foresee is that the United States is embarked on a path not unlike that of the former Soviet Union during the 1980s. The USSR collapsed for three basic reasons - internal economic contradictions driven by ideological rigidity, imperial overstretch, and an inability to reform. Because the United States is far wealthier, it may take longer for similar afflictions to do their work. But the similarities are obvious and it is nowhere written that the United States, in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must go on forever."

- Chalmers Johnson

"A culture begins in an explosion of myth, a sacred image of nature, self, and society that unites all men in a common dream, and then slowly the forces of routinization take over and the dream begins to fade. . . As the forces of palace, marketplace, and army develop, the myth decays until nothing holds man together but brute force. The disintegrating polity is finally compressed into the militaristic fascist state. Since every state organized for conquest also organizes its enemies to conquer it, such militarism creates the dismal cycle which leads to the destruction of civilization.”

-William Irwin Thompson