Wisdom from the Founding Fathers (and others) about money

*** For Educational Research Purposes Only ***

"All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in the Constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, as much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."John Adams
 
"When the government fears the people, you have liberty; when the people fear the government, you have tyranny."Thomas Jefferson
 
"I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy. The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace, and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes."Abraham Lincoln
 
"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."James Madison  
 
"Whomsoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate."James Garfield
"You (International Trans-Atlantic Bankers) are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out. If the American people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning." -Andrew Jackson
 
"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."Franklin D. Roosevelt
 
"The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it."John Kenneth Galbraith, in his book "Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went", 1975

"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and communism under the same tent, all under their control...Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent."Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 (flight KAL007) that was shot down by the Soviets.

"Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nations laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile."William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, 1935

"The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating."Thomas Jefferson

"The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system; a system which if it could do good in any form is yet so certain of leading to abuse as to be utterly incompatible with the public safety and prosperity. The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution."Thomas Jefferson

"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is The People vs. The Banks."Lord Acton, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1875

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."Frederic Bastiat, in his book "Economic Sophisms

"If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him a usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.Exodus 22:25. Take no usury of him, or increase...thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury.Leviticus 25:36-37. Unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: That the Lord thy God bless thee.Deuteronomy 23:20"The Holy Bible

"Those who swallow down usury cannot arise except as one whom Satan has prostrated by his touch does rise. That is because they say, trading is only like usury; and Allah has allowed trading and forbidden usury. To whomsoever then the admonition has come from his Lord, then he desists, he shall have what is already passed, and his affairs is in the hands of Allah; and whoever returns to itthese are the inmates of the fire; they shall abide in it..."The Qur'an, Surah Al-Baqarah

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs." Thomas Jefferson

"The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles...the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest [by not having to borrow from privately-owned corporate banks]...Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power."Abraham Lincoln

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people (e.g., by pitting the cooperation-oriented political left against the competition-oriented political right), until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war."Abraham Lincoln

"Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations."Andrew Jackson

"The bold effort the present bank has made to control the Government, the distress it has wantonly produced...are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American People should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution [The private Bank of the United States], or the establishment of another like it.(such as the private Federal Reserve Bank now)"Andrew Jackson

"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation and I care not who makes the laws." ??? Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the Rothschild international banking dynasty that is fleecing the World, 1790

"I am afraid that ordinary citizens will not like to be told that the banks can, and do, create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."Reginald McKenna, Chairman of the Midland Bank in London

"The world is governed by very different personages to what is imagined by those who are not themselves behind the scenes."Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes." Justice Felix Frankfurter, Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."Woodrow Wilson, 1913

"The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen...At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties." John F. Hylan, New York City Mayor, 1922

"The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They always did...they always will. They will have the same effect here as elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper spheres." Gouvernor Morris, head of the committee that wrote the final draft of the U.S. Constitution
"This (Federal Reserve) Act establishes the most gigantic trust [monopoly] on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs this bill, the invisible government by the Monetary Power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately, but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed. The trusts will soon realize that they have gone too far even for their own good. The people must make a declaration of independence to relieve themselves from the Monetary Power. This they will be able to do by taking control of Congress. Wall Streeters could not cheat us if you Senators and Representatives did not make a humbug of Congress...The greatest crime of Congress is its currency system. The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking bill. The caucus and the party bosses have again operated and prevented the people from getting the benefit of their own government."Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., 1913

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world, no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."Woodrow Wilson

"I have never seen more Senators express discontent with their jobs...I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices in doing something terrible and unforgivable to our wonderful country. Deep down in our heart, we know that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." Senator John Danforth

"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes...Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain."Napoleon

"Capital must protect itself in every way...Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principal men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd."Taken from the Civil Servants' Year Book, "The Organizer", January 1934

"It [Central Bank] gives the National Bank almost complete control of national finance. Those few who understand the system [check book money and credit] will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependant on its favours, that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of the people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical [contrary] to their interests."Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863

"...the lord and master of the money markets of the world, and of course virtually lord and master of everything else. He literally held the revenues of southern Italy in pawn, and monarchs and ministers of all countries courted his advice and were guided by his suggestions." Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, describing Baron Nathan Rothschild in his novel, "Coningsby: Or The New Generation"

"When the conflict with France ended (at the battle of Waterloo) the House of Rothschild was in control of British finance and was the official banker of the British Government. This odd financial octopus was acknowledged to be in some respects the greatest power on the earth and was acknowledged by some writers as the 'Sixth Great Power of Europe'."E.C. Knuth, in his book "The Empire of The City"

"The shareholders of these banks which own the stock of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are the people who have controlled our political and economic destinies since 1914. They are the Rothschilds, Lazard Freres (Eugene Mayer), Israel Sieff, Kuhn Loeb Company, Warburg Company, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller family, and the J.P. Morgan interests." Eustace Mullins, in his book "The Secrets Of The Federal Reserve"

"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it all back again. However, take this great power away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of Bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control credit."Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, the second richest man in Britain

"This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon."Robert H. Hamphill, Credit Manager, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank

"If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash."George Washington

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, (i.e., the "business cycle") the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."Thomas Jefferson

"Examining the organization and function of the Federal Reserve Banks and applying the relevant factors, we conclude that the Federal Reserve Banks are not Federal instrumentalities...but are independent and privately owned and controlled corporations...Federal Reserve Banks are listed neither as 'wholly owned' government corporations [under 31 U.S.C. Section 846] nor as 'mixed ownership' corporations [under 31 U.S.C. Section 856]...It is evident from the legislative history of the Federal Reserve Act that Congress did not intend to give the Federal government direction over the daily operation of the Reserve Banks...The fact that the Federal Reserve Board regulates the Reserve Banks does not make them Federal agencies under the Act...Unlike typical Federal agencies, each bank is empowered to hire and fire employees at will. Bank employees do not participate in the Civil Service Retirement System. They are covered by worker's compensation insurance, purchased by the Bank, rather than the Federal Employees Compensation Act. Employees traveling on Bank business are not subject to Federal travel regulations and do not receive government employee discounts on lodging and services..."Lewis vs. U.S., case #80-5905, 9th Circuit, June 24, 1982

"The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people's money."Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923

"Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders."Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1932

"The Federal Reserve Bank is nothing but a banking fraud and an unlawful crime against civilization. Why? Because they "create" the money made out of nothing, and our Uncle Sap Government issues their "Federal Reserve Notes" and stamps our Government approval with NO obligation whatever from these Federal Reserve Banks, Individual Banks or National Banks, etc."H.L. Birum, Sr., American Mercury Magazine, August 1957

"The Federal Reserve banks are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen. There is not a man within the sound of my voice who does not know that this nation is run by the International Bankers."Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1934

"Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powersbut the truth isthe Fed has usurped the Government. It controls everything here and it controls all of our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will."Congressman Louis T. McFadden, 1934

"The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market...The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank."Curtis Dall, Franklin D. Roosevelt's son-in-law, from his book, "My Exploited Father-in-Law"

"The one who cannot see that on Earth a big endeavor is taking place, an important plan, on which realization we are allowed to collaborate as faithful servants, certainly has to be blind."Winston Churchill
"There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself."Senator Daniel K. Inouye

"The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans."Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, 1876
"It is useless to deny, because it is impossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe the whole of Italy and France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of other countries is covered with a network of these secret societies, just as the superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads."Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, 1876

"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure."Joseph Kennedy, father of John F. Kennedy, in the July 26, l936 issue of The New York Times

"Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of governmenta bureaucratic elite."Senator William Jenner, 1954

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups."Carroll Quigley, Professor of History at Georgetown University in his book "Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time" (Macmillan Company, 1966), highly esteemed by his former student, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton

"In a small Swiss city [Basel] sits an international organization so obscure and secretive [that few people know about it]...Control of the institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible men; the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen."Keith Bradsher of the New York Times, August 5, 1995

"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is eager to enter into close relationship with the Bank for International Settlements...The conclusion is impossible to escape that the State and Treasury Departments are willing to pool the banking systems of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States."Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, New York Times, June 1930

"Ever since the Civil War, Congress has allowed the bankers to control financial legislation. The membership of the Finance Committee in the Senate [now the Banking and Currency Committee] and the Committee on Banking and Currency in the House have been made up chiefly of bankers, their agents, and their attorneys...In this way the committees have been able to control legislation in the interests of the few."Congressman Charles A. Lindberg, Sr.

"The Council on Foreign Relations is "The Establishment". Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also announces and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state of a one-world dictatorship."Former Congressman John Rarick, 1971

"The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the American Branch of a society which originated in England [The Royal Institute of International Affairs]...and believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established."Carroll Quigley, Professor of History at Georgetown University

"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of powerpolitical, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. What the Trilateralists truly intend is the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved. They believe the abundant materialism they propose to create will overwhelm existing differences. As managers and creators of the system they will rule the future."Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for President, 1964

"In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press...They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers."Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917

"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved,an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, more sure way of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner in which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."John Maynard Keynes

"In the colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial Script'. We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control it's purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to anyone."Benjamin Franklin, speaking at the London Parliament

"If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the North American Republic [i.e., honest Constitutionally authorized debt-free money] should become indurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without a debt (to the International Bankers). It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe!"The Times of London newspaper, opinion-editorial commentary

"It comes as news to most people to learn that practically all important ethical teachers Moses, Aristotle, Jesus, Mohammed, and Saint Thomas Aquinas, for instance have denounced lending at interest as usury and as morally wrong."Lawrence Dennis, Saturday Review of Literature 661, June 24, 1933

"The most sinister and anti-social feature about bank-deposit money is that it has no existence. The banks owe the public for a total amount of money which does not exist. In buying and selling, implemented by cheque transactions, there is a mere change in the party to whom the money is owed by the banks. As the one depositor's account is debited, the other is credited and the banks can go on owing for it all the time. The whole profit of the issuance of money has provided the capital of the great banking business as it exists today. Starting with nothing whatever of their own, they have got the whole world into their debt irredeemably, by a trick. This money comes into existence every time the banks 'lend' and disappears every time the debt is repaid to them. So that if industry tries to repay, the money of the nation disappears. This is what makes prosperity so 'dangerous' as it destroys money just when it is most needed and precipitates a slump. There is nothing left now for us but to get ever deeper and deeper into debt to the banking system in order to provide the increasing amounts of money the nation requires for its expansion and growth. An honest money system is the only alternative."Frederick Soddy, Nobel Prize Winner, 1921

"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the rape of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street..."Major General Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corps

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population...Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity...To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives...We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."George Kennan, Director of State Department Policy Planning staff, Truman Administration, 1948

"Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power."Benito Mussolini
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power."Franklin D. Roosevelt

"The perfect slave is the slave who thinks that he is free."