[D]uring half a century, reactionary influences from Europe have been shifting American thinking onto a basis of socialistic assumptions. In cities a… - Rose Wilder Lane

That way of life against which my generation rebelled had given us grim courage, fortitude, self-discipline, a sense of individual responsibility, and a capacity for relentless hard work.

We would learn more by looking at America. Oddly enough, statistics appear only in times of agitation and distress. Their function would appear to be that of omens of worse to come. We seem to have a morbid taste for them, like that of children for ghost stories that raise the hair. The American air has not been so full of fragmentary statistics since the Panic of 1893. I read again, for instance, that less than 10 per cent of our population own more than 90 per cent of the wealth… I read also that a hundred years ago 80 per cent of our population owned property and that today the percentage is 23.

Making the best of things is … a damn poor way of dealing with them.... My whole life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.