James J. Johnson

“In 1887, with a huge surplus in the treasury, Cleveland vetoed a bill appropriating $100,000 to give relief to Texas farmers to help them buy seed grain during a drought. He said: “Federal aid in such cases … encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character.” But that same year, Cleveland used his gold surplus to pay off wealthy bondholders at $28 above the $100 value of each bond—a gift of $45 million”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“…he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”
― Machiavelli Niccolo, The Prince

“The system, in its irrationality, has been driven by profit to build steel skyscrapers for insurance companies while the cities decay, to spend billions for weapons of destruction and virtually nothing for children’s playgrounds, to give huge incomes to men who make dangerous or useless things, and very little to artists, musicians, writers, actors. Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.”
― Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

“Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys