Mark Twain (c. 1835-1910)
“Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.”
- From chapter 18 of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court (Published in 1889). The edition used here is by Bantam/Random House (1981, 2005).
