We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the conflict between concentrated wealth and true democracy.
Brandeis suggests that a society can either prioritize democratic principles, where power is distributed among the many, or allow immense wealth to accumulate in the hands of a select few, which undermines democratic governance. The implications of this statement raise concerns about economic disparity and its detrimental effects on political equality and representation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a political rally to emphasize the need for economic reforms.
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of council, our own instincts and acts, and those of others, have defined for us the term 'Jew.'
In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit itself spells failure.
America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered.
Do you suppose that it is within your power to insult me? You evidently are not aware to whom you are speaking? Do you imagine that the envenomed spittle of five hundred little gentlemen of your type, heaped one upon another, would succeed in slobbering so much as the tips of my august toes?
If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.
The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.
Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.
I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.
We love force and we care very little how it is exhibited.
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