"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
Abraham Lincoln

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

"With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe. Men who are in everyday life responsible and decent were seduced by the trappings of authority, by the control of their perceptions, and by the uncritical acceptance of the experimenter’s definition of the situation, into performing harsh acts. A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority"
Stanley Milgram

"In the attempt to defeat terrorism, let us not become the enemies we deplore."
Barbara Lee, American Congresswoman, who voted against Bush’s war escalation, alone

"[The USAs] overriding purpose, from the beginning right through to the present day, has been world domination–that is, to build and maintain the capacity to coerce everybody else on the planet: nonviolently, if possible; and violently, if necessary. But the purpose of [US] foreign policy of domination is not just to make the rest of the world jump through hoops; the purpose is to facilitate our exploitation of their resources."
Ramsey Clark, US Attorney General, 1991

"Until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer."
from the resignation letter of Ambassador John Bradly Kiesling

"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoidal peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells."
John Flynn, 1944

"With unfailing consistancy, U.S. intervention has been on the side of the rich and powerful of various nations at the expense of the poor and needy. Rather than strengthening democracies, U.S. leaders have overthrown numerous democratically elected governments or other populist regimes in dozens of countries … whenever these nations give evidence of putting the interests of their people ahead of the interests of multinational corporate interests."
– Michael Parenti, political scientist and author

"Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own." William Greider, journalist and author