Ex Libris Kirkland

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First Written 1917
Genre Essays
Origin UK
Publisher IHS Press
ISBN-10 0971489432
ISBN-13 978-0971489431
My Copy cheap paperback
First Read April 20, 2005

Utopia of Usurers



The word "rebel" understates our cause. It is much too mild; it lets our enemies off much too easily. By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity, Capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller "I am a rebel." I should say "I am a respectable man and you are not."

Quoted on May 20, 2012

All but the hard-hearted must be torn with pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep the poor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have to do it.

Quoted on May 20, 2012

Immortality is the great holiday; and a holiday, like the immortality in the old theologies, is a double-edged privilege. But wherever it is genuine it is simply the restoration and completion of the man. If people ever looked at the printed word under their eye, the word "recreation" would be like the word "resurrection," the blast of a trumpet.

Quoted on May 20, 2012

When one large shop occupies the whole of one side of a street (or sometimes both sides), it does so in order that men may be unable to get what they want; and may be forced to buy what they don't want. That the rapidly approaching kingdom of the Capitalists will ruin art and letters, I have already said. I say here that in the only sense that can be called human, it will ruin trade, too.

Quoted on May 20, 2012

I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if we allow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirely disappear. There will be no art that might not just as well be advertisement.

Quoted on May 20, 2012


Ex Libris Kirkland is a super-self-absorbed reading journal made by Matt Kirkland. Copyright © 2001 - .
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