For twenty years it had been generally known that an insidious Lobby was maintained in Washington to influence legislation and executive action on behalf of vested interests. ... The lobby was a creature of darkness. It worked behind closed doors and whispered in corners. This ancient industry was one form of invisible government.

Here was a corporation behaving like a monster though the individuals who owned its stock were human cultivated men. A corporation has no soul.

[On social change:] What I say is that if one country is annexed by another, its nationality is not changed overnight. Social processes are often very, very slow.

Money is what you'd get on beautifully without if only other people weren't so crazy about it.

[On the socialites in New York in the Nineties who devoted themselves to politics, charities, and other volunteer work:] I never knew but one woman who devoted her life exclusively to the social game. She ended her days arranging dinner parties with paper dolls, a breakdown pitiful to watch.

There was a time in my life when election year was nothing to me, but in 1912, I joined that great army of Americans who drop a stitch in their routine every four years, and give themselves up to backing first a candidate for the nomination and afterwards a nominee.

[On women getting the vote:] The newspapers, poor dears, looked of course for something very spectacular. But then newspapers are always apt to be more interested in phenomena like meteors than in the slow growth of a mighty tree. Wait ten years, and the politicians will one day wake up and say, 'Look who's here!