communities quotes

Who can tell without instruction what is likely to be the effect of thenew loans of England toforeignnations? We press upon half-finished and half-civilized communities incalculable sums; we are to them what the London money-dealers are to students at Oxford and Cambridge.

-Walter Bagehot
  'Postulates of English Political Economy', in Economic Studies (1880).

Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.

-James Fenimore Cooper
  The American Democrat,'On the Disadvantages of a Monarchy'.

We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final stage of affluent miserya crocus on a garbage heap.

-JohnWilliam Gardner
  In the NewYork Times, 9 Oct.