It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the mon… - John Steinbeck

The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.

Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?

Someone's got to do these things,' he said sullenly. 'Or else fate would not ever get nose-thumbed and mankind would still be clinging to the top branches of a tree.

What I am mourning is perhaps not worth saving, but I regret its loss nevertheless.