Daily Inspiration Quote by Leonard Peltier

Peltier’s line is less a history lesson than a provocation: it yanks the FBI out of the civics-textbook role of neutral lawman and drops it into the grittier category of political actor. The word “always” is doing heavy work. It’s not meant as a footnoted timeline; it’s a moral accusation, an insistence on pattern rather than exception. By pairing “big business” with “big government,” Peltier collapses a familiar American false choice - free markets versus state power - into a single alliance that, in his view, polices the same people in different uniforms.

The subtext is personal and strategic. As an Indigenous activist and one of the most famous (and contested) political prisoners in modern U.S. history, Peltier speaks from the long shadow of federal surveillance and repression of radical movements, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. The quote implicitly invokes the FBI’s documented record of counterintelligence tactics: monitoring, infiltrating, and disrupting groups seen as threats to “order,” often defined by those already holding economic and political leverage.

What makes the line work is its blunt symmetry. “Supported” is a deliberately mild verb for a harsh claim: not just enforcing laws, but sustaining a power structure. It’s rhetoric designed to reframe legitimacy itself. If the FBI is aligned with institutional power, then dissent becomes suspect by definition, and “public safety” starts to read like brand management for the state-corporate status quo.