Dakota

“Certainly there was much to despise about the legislatures of the Gilded Age, which were often severely malapportioned in favor of rural interests, heavily influenced by party machines, and directly or indirectly controlled by powerful corporate interests.”
― Christopher H. Achen, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

“Year by year, month by month, the plight of our fragmentary and precarious civilization becomes more serious. Fascism abroad grows more bold and ruthless in its foreign ventures, more tyrannical toward its own citizens, more barbarian in its contempt for the life of the mind. Even in our own country we have reason to fear a tendency toward militarization and the curtailment of civil liberty. Moreover, while the decades pass, no resolute step is taken to alleviate the injustice of our social order. Our outworn economic system dooms millions to frustration.”
― Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker

“A last red ray lighting up that stern soldier-like head, on which the tonsure lay like a cicatrised wound from the blow of a club; then the ray faded away and the priest, now wrapped in shadow, seemed nothing more than a black silhouette against the ashy grey of the gloaming.”
― Émile Zola, Delphi Complete Works of Emile Zola