Frederick Lewis Allen

“Though there was much sheer rascality in the Wall Street of the nineteen-twenties, much sheer greed roaming at large, and a widespread betrayal of the fiduciary principle, it may be that none of these things did as much damage to the country, in the sum total, as the sheer irresponsibility of men who, possessing vast powers, played the game of profit and loss without regard for the general public interest.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation: The History of America's 1 Percent

“He fell into the pit which is digged for every idealist. Having failed to embody his ideal in fact, he distorted the fact. He pictured the world, to himself and to others, not as it was, but as he wished it to be. The optimist became a sentimentalist. The story of the Conference which he told to the American people when he returned home was a very beautiful romance of good men and true laboring without thought of selfish advantage for the welfare of humanity. He said that if the United States did not come to the aid of mankind by indorsing all that had been done at Paris, the heart of the world would be broken. But the only heart which was broken was his own.”
― Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s