Famous Quotes: Money, Banking, & the Federal Reserve

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, 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 war.”
- Abraham Lincoln - In a letter written to William Elkin

“The money power preys on 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

“A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation 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 world - no longer a Government of free opinion no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.... Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, 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 had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
- Woodrow Wilson - In The New Freedom (1913)

“The fact is that there is a serious danger of this country becoming a Pluto-democracy; that is, a sham republic with the real government in the hands of a small clique of enormously wealthy men, who speak through their money, and whose influence, even today, radiates to every corner of the United States.”
- William McAdoo - President Wilson's national campaign vice-chairman, wrote in Crowded Years

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction... I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity... is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“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 should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“... To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill [chartering the first Bank of the United States], have not, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution.”
- Thomas Jefferson - in opposition to the chartering of the first Bank of the United States (1791).

“We have stricken the (slave) shackles from four million human beings and brought all laborers to a common level not so much by the elevation of former slaves as by practically reducing the whole working population, white and black, to a condition of serfdom. While boasting of our noble deeds, we are careful to conceal the ugly fact that by an iniquitous money system we have nationalized a system of oppression which, though more refined, is not less cruel than the old system of chattel slavery.”
- Horace Greeley - (1811-1872) founder of the New York Tribune

“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 - (1801-1850) in Economic Sophisms

“The powers of financial capitalism had (a) 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 meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be 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. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.”
- Prof. Carroll Quigley in Tragedy and Hope

“In a small Swiss city sits an international organization so obscure and secretive....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 system of Europe and America, setting up a world financial power independent of and above the Government of the United States....The United States under present conditions will be transformed from the most active of manufacturing nations into a consuming and importing nation with a balance of trade against it.”
- Rep. Louis McFadden - Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency quoted in the New York Times (June 1930)

“Nothing did more to spur the boom in stocks than the decision made by the New York Federal Reserve bank, in the spring of 1927, to cut the rediscount rate. Benjamin Strong, Governor of the bank, was chief advocate of this unwise measure, which was taken largely at the behest of Montagu Norman of the Bank of England....At the time of the Banks action I warned of its consequences....I felt that sooner or later the market had to break.”
- Money baron Bernard Baruch in Baruch: The Public Years (1960)

“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, August 1957, p. 43

“[The] abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit.... In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holdings illegal, as was done in the case of gold.... The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.... [This] is the shabby secret of the welfare statist's tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.”
- Alan Greenspan in an article he wrote in 1966.

“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

“If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.”
- Andrew Jackson

“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. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.”
- Abraham Lincoln

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
- Henry Ford

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within."
- General Douglas MacArthur

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."
- U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917

"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."
- U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter written Nov. 21, 1933 to Colonel E. Mandell House

We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans."
- Bill Clinton, USA Today on 3/11/93, page 2a

"In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all."
- Strobe Talbot, President Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State, Time Magazine, July 20th, l992

"The invisible Money Power is working to control and enslave mankind. It financed Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Zionism, Socialism. All of these are directed to making the United States a member of a World Government."
- American Mercury Magazine, December 1957, p. 92

"It is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go....We are living in the end of the sovereign states....In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish....Countless people...will hate the new world order....and will die protesting against it."
- H.G. Wells, in his book, “The New World Order”, 1940

"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government."
- Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference in Evians, France, 1991

"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."
- Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England, "Coningsby, the New Generation", 1844

"I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election....It adds up to a preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States!"
- George W. Malone, U.S. Senator (Nevada), speaking before Congress, 1957

"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining super capitalism 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 that was shot down by the Soviets

"The United Nations will spearhead our efforts to manage the new conflicts (that afflict our world)....Yes the principles of the United Nations Charter are worth our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
- General Colin Powell, 4/21/93, receiving the UN-USA Global Leadership Award

“The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses... This little coterie...runs our government for their own selfish ends. It operates under cover of a self-created screen...seizes...our executive officers...legislative bodies...schools... courts...newspapers and every agency created for the public protection.”
- John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York, Mayor, 1918-1925

"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 power--Political, Monetary, Intellectual, and Ecclesiastical."
- U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, his book "No Apologies", 1964

“From the days of Spartacus, Weishaupt, Karl Marx, Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxemburg and Emma Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century. And now at last, this band of extraordinary personalities from the under- world of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”
- Winston Churchill to the London press in 1922.

“Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
- David Rockefeller, Memoirs, page 405

“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."
- British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, 1876

"For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy making arm of the government."
- President Harry Truman

"The idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies [Marxism/fascism/socialism v. democracy/capitalism] to enable them [the Illuminati] to divide larger and larger portions of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other."
- Myron Fagan

"From the earliest days, the Rothschilds appreciated the importance of proximity to politicians, the men who determined not only the extent of budget deficits but also the domestic and foreign policies..."
- Niall Ferguson

"By remaining behind the scenes, they (the Rothschilds) were able to avoid the brunt of public anger which was directed, instead, at the political figures which they largely controlled. This is a technique which has been practiced by financial manipulators ever since, and it is fully utilized by those who operate the Federal Reserve System today."
- G. Edward Griffin

"Lord Rothschild had access to all manner of leaders and experts. He was responsible only to the Prime Minister and answerable to neither the electorate nor the civil service chiefs."
- Derek Wilson

"The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed… Therefore they sent their emissaries into the field to exploit the question of slavery and to open an abyss between the two sections of the Union."
- German chancellor Otto von Bismarck

"Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the (Rothschild) brothers conducted important transactions on behalf of the governments of England, France, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Naples, Portugal, Brazil, various German states and smaller countries. They were the personal bankers of many of the crowned heads of Europe. They made large investments, through agents, in markets as distant as the United States, India, Cuba and Australia."
- G. Edward Griffin

“The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing.”
- William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, 1694.

“All the perplexities, confusion and distresses in America arise not from defects in the constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”
- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson.

“The money power denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.”
- Democrat Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.

"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce."
- US President James A. Garfield

“This Federal Reserve Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Wilson) signs this bill the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalized.”
- Hon. Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.

“Bankers own the earth; take it away from them but leave them with the power to create credit; and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... If you want to be slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers control money and control credit.”
- Sir Josiah Stamp, Director, Bank of England, 1940.

"Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment out of nothing."
- Ralph M. Hawtrey, former Secretary of Treasury, England.

“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
- John K. Galbraith, in “Money: Whence it came, where it went”, p. 29.

“The banks do create money. They have been doing it for a long time, but they didn't quite realize it, and they did not admit it. Very few did. You will find it in all sorts of documents, financial textbooks, etc. But in the intervening years, and we must all be perfectly frank about these things, there has been a development of thought, until today I doubt very much whether you would get many prominent bankers to attempt to deny that banks create credit.”
- H. W. White, Chairman of the Associated Banks of New Zealand, to the New Zealand Monetary Commission, 1955.

“You have to choose [as a voter] between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold."
- George Bernard Shaw

"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."
- John Danforth (R-Mo)

"We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors and a ruined people."
- Daniel Webster

“Most Americans have no real understanding of the operations of the international moneylenders... the accounts of the Federal Reserve have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and ... manipulates the credit of the United States”
- Sen. Barry Goldwater (R. –AZ)

“Nothing but widespread suffering will produce any effect on Congress... Our only safety is in pursuing a steady course of firm restriction - and I have no doubt that such a course will ultimately lead to restoration of the currency and the re-charter of the bank."
- Nicholas Biddle

“The death of Lincoln was a disaster for Christendom. There was no man in the United States great enough to wear his boots and the bankers went anew to grab the riches. I fear that foreign bankers with their craftiness and tortuous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt modern civilization. They will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos in order that the earth should become their inheritance."
- Otto von Bismarck

"There cannot be stable money within an environment dominated by ideologies hostile to the preservation of economic freedom."
- Ludwig von Mises

"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

"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money."
- Daniel Webster

"Every circulating FRN (Federal Reserve Note) represents a one dollar debt to the Federal Reserve System."
- Money Facts, House Banking and Currency Committee

"Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities, intrinsically; a 'dollar' bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries."
- Modern Money Mechanics Workbook, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 1975

"The governments alone are responsible for the spread of the superstitious awe with which the common man looks upon every bit of paper upon which the treasury or agencies which it controls have printed the magical words legal tender."
- Ludwig von Mises

"Fiat Money: Money that a government has declared to be legal tender, despite the fact that it has no intrinsic value and is not backed by reserves."
- investopedia.com

"Those who create and issue money and credit direct the policies of government and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people."
- Reginald McKenna, former Chancellor of Exchequer, England

"When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check, but when the Federal Reserve writes a check there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money."
- Putting It Simply, Boston Federal Reserve Bank

"How pale is the art of sorcerers, witches, and conjurers when compared with that of the government's Treasury Department!"
- Ludwig von Mises

"We have, in this country, one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board. This evil institution has impoverished the people of the United States and has practically bankrupted our government. It has done this through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it."
- Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1932

"If you increase the quantity of money, you bring about the lowering of the purchasing power of the monetary unit."
- Ludwig von Mises

"Money is the most important subject intellectual persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and its defects remedied very soon."
- Robert H. Hemphill, former credit manager, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

"Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess."
- Irving Fisher, 100% Money

"Without the confidence factor, many believe a paper money system is liable to collapse eventually."
- Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Gold, p. 10

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."
- David Rockefeller

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years... It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
- David Rockefeller, Bilderberg Meeting, June 1991 Baden, Germany

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependent on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class."
- Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild

“Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws."
- Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild