Historical Connection: John Augustus Sutter
"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds throughout all history: repression only seeks to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression."
~John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 19
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Extensions:
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach."
~Aldous Huxley