Robber Barons Quotes

When the court is arrayed in splendor, The fields are full of weeds, And the granaries are empty. Some wear gorgeous clothes, Carry sharp swords, And indulge in food and drink; They have more possessions than they can use. They are robber barons. This is certainly not the way of Tao. ~ Lao-Tzu

The dilemma is, in the United States, each penniless citizen believes that, with luck, he might become a millionaire; and so doesn't want to put restraints on "robber barons"-he might become one one day! ~ Joyce Carol Oates

People like the robber barons assumed that the doctrine of the survival of the fittest authenticated them as deserving power. You know, "I'm the richest. Therefore, I'm the best. God's in his heaven, etc." And that reaction of the robber barons was so irritating to people that it made it unfashionable to think of an economy as an ecosystem. But the truth is that it is a lot like an ecosystem. And you get many of the same results. ~ Charlie Munger

The latter-day robber barons are discovering that better conditions and rewards for workers pay off in a world where consumers increasingly demand ethical standards. ~ Clare Short

In the Eisenhower era, when earnings over $400,000 were subject to 91 percent taxes and the world was a smaller place, you could count the truly wealthy on one hand: Getty, Dupont, Mellon, Rockefeller, though even those fortunes were being dispersed to children as the old robber barons died off. ~ Michael Shnayerson

Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival. ~ Carl Sagan

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ~ C.S. Lewis

I steal from the rich to give to myself. ~ Robert Thier

I can live with the robber barons, but how do you live with these pathological radicals? ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Ultimately Rockefeller's confidence games proved wildly successful. At its height, his fortune outstripped those of all the other robber barons-even Carnegie's, by a hair. By 1913, Rockefeller's net worth totaled nearly a billion dollars, or 2 percent of the U.S. gross national product; a comparable share today would give Rockefeller a net worth of $190 billion, or more than triple that of the richest man in the contemporary world, Bill Gates. ~ Jackson Lears

Cornelius Vanderbilt and his fellow tycoon John D. Rockefeller were often called 'robber barons'. Newspapers said they were evil, and ran cartoons showing Vanderbilt as a leech sucking the blood of the poor. Rockefeller was depicted as a snake. What the newspapers printed stuck--we still think of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller as 'robber barons'. But it was a lie. They were neither robbers nor barons. They weren't robbers, because they didn't steal from anyone, and they weren't barons--they were born poor.
Vanderbilt got rich by pleasing people. He invented ways to make travel and shipping things cheaper. He used bigger ships, faster ships, served food onboard. People liked that. And the extra volume of business he attracted allowed him to lower costs. He cut the New York--Hartford fare from $8 to $1. That gave consumers more than any 'consumer group' ever has.
It's telling that the 'robber baron' name-calling didn't come from consumers. It was competing businessmen who complained, and persuaded the media to join in.
Rockefeller got rich selling oil. First competitors and then the government called him a monopolist, but he wasn't--he had competitors. No one was forced to buy his oil. Rockefeller enticed people to buy it by selling it for less. That's what his competitors hated. He found cheaper ways to get oil from the ground to the gas pump. This made life better for millions. Working-class people, who used to go to bed when it got dark, could suddenly afford fuel ~ John Stossel

When John Kennedy attempted to take the government back from the back from the robber barons, he was brutally murdered. The message to future US president and leaders across the world was clear: do as you're told, or die. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the last true president of the United States. And until the globalists are removed from power, we will never have another real one. ~ Alex Jones

Kaldar almost never stops and thinks about the consequences of his actions. Something is fun or not fun, and my brother's fun often lands him in interesting places such as jails or castles belonging to California robber barons. Where other people see certain death, my brother sees an opportunity for a hilarious, thrilling adventure. But when I got the tattoo, Kaldar warned me that marrying her was a bad idea. ~ Ilona Andrews

The American Constitution was carefully rigged by the noteholders, land speculators, rum runners, and slave holders who were the Founding Fathers, so that it would be next to impossible for upstart dirt farmers and indebted masses to challenge the various forms of private property held by these well read robber barons. Through this Constitution, the over-privileged attempted to rule certain topics out of order for proper political discussion. To bring these topics up in polite conversation was to invite snide invective, charges of personal instability, or financial ruin. ~ G. William Domhoff

Reagan 's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else. ~ Bill Moyers

My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with - bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons - when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin. ~ David Mamet

The night of the fireworks changed the course of many lives in England, though no one suspected the dark future as hundreds of courtiers stared, faces upturned in delight, at the starbursts of crimson, green, and gold that lit up the terraces, gardens, and pleasure grounds of Rosethorn House, the country home of Richard, Baron Thornleigh. That night, no one was more proud to belong to the baron's family than his eighteen-year-old ward, Justine Thornleigh; she had no idea that she would soon cause a deadly division in the family and ignite a struggle between two queens. Yet she was already, innocently, on a divergent path, for as Lord and Lady Thornleigh and their multitude of guests watched the dazzle of fireworks honoring the spring visit of Queen Elizabeth, Justine was hurrying away from the public gaiety. Someone had asked to meet her in private. ~ Barbara Kyle

I do have a life,' says Charis, blinking wet eyes.

'You have a rich inner life,' says Tony firmly. 'More than most. ~ Margaret Atwood

792. Thief.-- N. thief, robber, homo trium literarum, pilferer, rifler, filcher, plagiarist.

spoiler, depredator, pillager, marauder; harpy, shark, land-shark, falcon, moss-trooper, bushranger, Bedouin, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit, pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones; buccan-eer, -ier; piqu-, pick-eerer; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee, wrecker, picaroon; smuggler, poacher, plunderer, racketeer.

highwayman, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Macheath, knight of the road, foodpad, sturdy beggar; abductor, kidnapper.

cut-, pick-purse; pick-pocket, light-fingered gentry; sharper; card-, skittle-sharper; crook; thimble-rigger; rook, Greek, blackleg, leg, welsher, defaulter; Autolycus, Cacus, Barabbas, Jeremy Diddler, Robert Macaire, artful dodger, trickster; swell mob, chevalier d'industrie; shop-lifter.

swindler, peculator; forger, coiner, counterfeiter, shoful; fence, receiver of stolen goods, duffer; smasher.

burglar, housebreaker; cracks-, mags-man; Bill Sikes, Jack Sheppard, Jonathan Wild, Raffles, cat burglar.

[Roget's Thesaurus, 1941 Revision] ~ Peter Mark Roget

He would shoot his adversary in a duel, and go against a bear if need be, and fight off a robber in the forest
all as successfully and fearlessly as L
n, yet without any sense of enjoyment, but solely out of unpleasant necessity, listlessly, lazily, even with boredom. Anger, of course, constituted a progress over L
n, even over Lermontov. There was perhaps more anger in Nikolai Vsevolodovich than in those two together, but this anger was cold, calm, and if one may put it so, reasonable, and therefore the most repulsive and terrible that can be. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I know where the Iberian Peninsula is, Iris."
"I know, I know, you probably built the first road or furrowed the first wheat field ever sown there."
"Brat."
"Cradle robber."
"Grave robber. ~ Molly Harper

There is another dangerous component to armed robberies, one that I could never understand. I noticed some time ago that with each robbery I committed there was an intense out of control anger that gripped me. It was as if I was there to get something that was inherently mine, and I came to take it by force. I've heard many stories directly from individuals about how they just burst into stores with their guns drawn. They would be shouting at people, gun butting them sometimes for no reason at all. One individual told me that he ran into a store and jump kicked a fella who just stood there. The only reason he was kicked is that he was there.
It's as if once you've overridden your conscience of going through with the act, it is replaced with anger and a level of brutality that is usually reserved for when you are fighting for your life. This, to me, is what makes armed robberies so dangerous - because the slightest provocation or any sudden movement by anyone could lead to them being shot or killed. It is always an extremely delicate and dicey situation, because the armed robber is pulling the trigger out of fear more than anything else. ~ Drexel Deal

The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign - for all these titles are synonymous - imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once ... [and so] property engenders despotism ... That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse ... if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings - kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

So the idea was that, some catastrophic event had happened. There was a long dark age and then out of that, 100 years ago in this world, seven barons - these men and women - rose up and formed the new society. It's a feudal world, a part feudal barons and part warlord and part mob boss and they each control a huge resource so that there's an uneasy alliance, but they all need each other. ~ Alfred Gough

Certain countries long ago succeeded where the U.S. has failed in commercializing their air traffic control systems, putting them in the hands of private or quasi-private operators able to raise capital, charge fees, and invest in growth, free of meddling by congressional pork barons. You want a drone-friendly air traffic control system? This is the place to start. Our FAA isn't blindly anti-drone but simply marooned in a system that still needs thousands of eyeballs gazing at radar terminals and out of cockpit windshields. ~ Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Though environmental orthodoxy holds that Third World deforestation is caused by rapacious clear-cutters and ruthless cattle barons, penniless peasants seeking fuel wood may be the greatest threat to our forests. ~ Gregg Easterbrook

I've always been, in games, the bad guy. If there was ever cops and robbers I was always a robber. ~ Jake M. Johnson

Mitch looks in her direction. He can't meet her eyes. It's as if she's semi-invisible, a kind of hovering blur. ~ Margaret Atwood

Go to the bank looking like a bank robber! ~ Steven Magee

We continue to be exasperated by the view, apparently gaining momentum in certain circles, that armed robbery is okay as long as nobody gets hurt! The proper solution to armed robbery is a dead robber, on the scene. ~ Jeff Cooper

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea. ~ John Adams

She had an idea, but it was the wrong idea. It was hardly even an idea, just a white idea balloon with no writing inside it. ~ Margaret Atwood

This [Magna Carta] has been forced from the King. It constitutes an insult to the Holy See, a serious weakening of the royal power, a disgrace to the English nation, a danger to all Christendom, since this civil war obstructs the crusade. Therefore?we condemn the charter and forbid the King to keep it, or the barons and their supporters to make him do so, on pain of excommunication. ~ Pope Innocent III

My Lady Baroness, who weighed three hundred and fifty pounds, consequently was a person of no small consideration; and then she did the honors of the house with a dignity that commanded universal respect. Her daughter was about seventeen years of age, fresh-colored, comely, plump, and desirable. The Baron's son seemed to be a youth in every respect worthy of the father he sprung from. Pangloss, the preceptor, was the oracle of the family, and little Candide listened to his instructions with all the simplicity natural to his age and disposition. ~ Voltaire

There are folks who can't abide camp-robber jays, but I take to them. Often enough they've been my only company for days at a time, and they surely do get friendly. They'll steal your grub right from under your nose, but who I am to criticize the lifestyle of a bird? He has his ways, I have mine. Like I say, I take to them. ~ Louis L'Amour

I was known as the chief grave robber of my state. ~ Dan Quayle

Fear is a great robber of power. It paralyzes the thinking faculties, ruins spontaneity, enthusiasm, and self confidence. It has a blighting effect upon all one's thoughts, moods, and efforts. It destroys ambition and efficiency. ~ Orison Swett Marden

We must stop calling our drug barons and "419s" (fraudsters) nouveau riche, big shots or those who have made it. ~ Sunday Adelaja

There is no friend so faithful as a good book. There is no worse robber than a bad book. ~ Italian Proverb

I grew up in an environment where the onus of raising a child was not on the parents alone but of the entire community. The logic is in that a child who becomes a burden or an armed robber becomes a threat not only to the parents but to a whole society! ~ Nana Awere Damoah

In the hands of a people whose education has been willfully neglected, the ballot is a cunning swindle benefitting only the united barons of industry, trade and property. ~ Daniel Guerin

You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi; I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation; not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

So you talk about the mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the baron's wars. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I inherited this country when I was only a child, Nahuseresh. I have held it. I have fought down rebellious barons. I've fought Sounis to keep the land on this side of the mountains. I have killed men and watched them hang. I've seen them tortured to keep this country safe and mine. How did you think I did this if I was a fool with cow eyes for any handsome man with gold in his purse? ~ Megan Whalen Turner

Often, half in a bay of the mountains and half on a headland, a small and nearly amphibian Schloss mouldered in the failing light among the geese and the elder-bushes and the apple trees. Dank walls rose between towers that were topped with cones of moulting shingle. Weeds throve in every cranny. Moss mottled the walls. Fissures branched like forked lightning across damp masonry which the rusting iron clamps tried to hold together, and buttresses of brick shored up the perilously leaning walls. The mountains, delaying sunrise and hastening dusk, must have halved again the short winter days. Those buildings looked too forlorn for habitation. But, in tiny, creeper-smothered windows, a faint light would show at dusk. Who lived in those stone-flagged rooms where the sun never came? Immured in those six-foot-thick walls, overgrown outside with the conquering ivy and within by genealogical trees all moulting with mildew? My thoughts flew at once to solitary figures…a windowed descendant of a lady-in-waiting at the court of Charlemagne, alone with the Sacred Heart and her beads, or a family of wax-pale barons, recklessly inbred; bachelors with walrus moustaches, bent double with rheumatism, shuddering from room to room and coughing among their lurchers, while their cleft palates called to each other down corridors that were all but pitch dark. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

Unkindness to anything means an injustice to that thing. If I am unkind to you I do you an injustice, or wrong you in some way. On the other hand, if I try to assist you in every way that I can to make a better citizen and in every way to do my very best for you, I am kind to you. The above principles apply with equal force to the soil. The farmer whose soil produces less every year, is unkind to it in some way; that is, he is not doing by it what he should; he is robbing it of some substance it must have, and he becomes, therefore, a soil robber rather than a progressive farmer. ~ George Washington Carver

In any case, [y]ou can't teach a monkey to speak and you can't teach an Arab to be democratic. You're dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber and a killer and a liar. The Arab destroys everything he touches. ~ Moshe Feiglin

Ralston didn't care. He turned on his brother as the surgeon knelt next to him and inspected the wound. "She could have been killed!"
And what about you?" This time, it was Callie who spoke, her own pent-up energy releasing in anger, and the men turned as one to look at her, surprised that she and found her voice. "What about you and your idiotic pland to somehow restore my honor by playing guns out in the middle of nowhere with OXFORD?" She said the baron's name in disdain. "Like children? Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, thoughtless, MALE things to do ... who even FIGHTS duels anymore?! ~ Sarah MacLean

When princes flee battle, and knights turn free-lance, and barons rob pilgrims, what value has honor?"
"Why, all the more, seeing how rare it has become. ~ Michael Flynn

Bad is not an absolute, but a relative term. Ask the robber who used the cash he stole to feed his infant; the rapist who was sexually abused as a child; the kidnapper who truly believed he was saving a life. And just because you break the law doesn't mean you have intentionally crossed the line into evil. Sometimes the line creeps up on you, and before you know it, you're standing on the other side. ~ Jodi Picoult