We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both. - Louis D. Brandeis

In a democratic society the existence of large centers of private power is a dangerous to the continuing vitality of a free people.

The investment banker is naturally on the lookout for good bargains in bonds and stocks. Like other merchants he wants to buy his merchandise cheap. But when he becomes director of a corporation, he occupies a position which prevents the transaction by which he acquires its corporate securities from being properly called a bargain. Can there be real bargaining where the same man is on both sides of a trade?

What I have desired to do is to make the people of Boston realize that the most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen. The duties of the office of private citizen cannot under a republican form of government be neglected without serious injury to the public.