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Dreiser, Theodore, 1871-1945

"The Financier, a novel"

He had no
particular respect for any of them--not even Harper Steger, though he
liked him. They were tools to be used--knives, keys, clubs, anything
you will; but nothing more. When they were through they were paid
and dropped--put aside and forgotten. As for judges, they were merely
incompetent lawyers, at a rule, who were shelved by some fortunate turn
of chance, and who would not, in all likelihood, be as efficient as the
lawyers who pleaded before them if they were put in the same position.
He had no respect for judges--he knew too much about them. He knew how
often they were sycophants, political climbers, political hacks, tools,
time-servers, judicial door-mats lying before the financially and
politically great and powerful who used them as such. Judges were
fools, as were most other people in this dusty, shifty world. Pah! His
inscrutable eyes took them all in and gave no sign. His only safety lay,
he thought, in the magnificent subtley of his own brain, and nowhere
else. You could not convince Cowperwood of any great or inherent virtue
in this mortal scheme of things. He knew too much; he knew himself.


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