Study and think and improve your mind, and keep it clear of all this fog of hatred and propaganda - Upton Sinclair

[H]ere are three sentences for you to paste in your hat and learn by heart. First: Credit is the life blood of industry, and the control of credit is the control of all society. Second: The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery. And Third: The American banking system is the most perfect contrivance yet devised by the human brain for making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

"You listen to these things," the man was saying, "and you say, 'Yes, they are true, but they have been that way always.' Or you say, 'Maybe it will come, but not in my time — it will not help me.' And so you return to your daily round of toil, you go back to be ground up for profits in the world-wide mill of economic might! To toil long hours for another's advantage; to live in mean and squalid homes, to work in dangerous and unhealthful places; to wrestle with the specters of hunger and privation, to take your chances of accident, disease, and death. And each day the struggle becomes fiercer, the pace more cruel; each day you have to toil a little harder, and feel the iron hand of circumstance close upon you a little tighter. Months pass, years maybe — and then you come again; and again I am here to plead with you, to know if want and misery have yet done their work with you, if injustice and oppression have yet opened your eyes!"

Truly it seemed that a great people had gone mad; but it is a fact well known to alienists that you cannot convince a madman of his own condition, and only make him madder by trying.