But there is another form of monopoly, far more general and far more insidious. The accumulation of large amounts of capital under consolidated contr… - Henry George

Stepping out of their proper sphere and arrogating to themselves an authority to which they have no claim, professed teachers of spiritual truths long presumed to deny the truths of the natural sciences. But now professed teachers of the natural sciences, stepping in turn out of their proper sphere and arrogating to themselves an authority to which they have no claim, presume to deny spiritual truths. And there are many, who having discarded an authority often perverted by the influence of dominant wrong, have in its place accepted another authority which in its blank materialism affords as efficient a means for stilling conscience and defending selfish greed as any perversion of religious truth. Mr. Spencer is the foremost representative of this authority. Widely regarded as the scientific philosopher; eulogized by his admirers as the greatest of all philosophers — as the man who has cleared and illuminated the field of philosophy by bringing into it the exact methods of science — he carries to the common mind the weight of the marvelous scientific achievements of our time as applied to the most momentous of problems. The effect is to impress it with a vague belief that modern science has proved the idea of God to be an ignorant superstition and the hope of a future life a vain delusion.

behind dim empires vaguer ghosts of empire loom.

The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.