Mary Elizabeth Lease Quotes & Sayings

Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master ... Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware. — Mary Elizabeth Lease

An organized effort is making to deceive the people. There are two great enemies of thought and progress, the aristocracy of royalty and the aristocracy of gold. — Mary Elizabeth Lease

What you farmers need to do is raise less corn and more Hell. — Mary Elizabeth Lease

Kansas had better stop raising corn and begin raising hell. — Mary Elizabeth Lease

The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master ... The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States ... We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. — Mary Elizabeth Lease

A mortgaged home, an empty stomach and a ragged back know no party. We will live to write the epitaphs of the old parties: "Died of general debility, old age, and chronic falsehoods." — Mary Elizabeth Lease