Carolina QuotesThe poor man who takes property by force is called a thief, but the creditor who can by legislation make a debtor pay a dollar twice as large as he borrowed is lauded as the friend of a sound currency. The man who wants the people to destroy the Government is an anarchist, but the man who wants the Government to destroy the people is a patriot.
William Jennings Bryan Carolinian
Source
Principal Speech Against Unconditional Repeal (16 August 1893)
- form
- speech
- year
- 1893
Cite this record
“The poor man who takes property by force is called a thief, …” William Jennings Bryan. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-4F17FCB325. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/4f17fcb325
More from William Jennings Bryan
Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endangers its cargo.
In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane — the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future.
I have been so satisfied with the Christian religion that I have spent no time trying to find arguments against it. … I am not afraid now that you will show me any. I feel that I have enough information to live and die by.