Money Quotes

Here are a few things people have said about money

"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

"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce." - James A. Garfield, 20th US President

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." - Thomas Jefferson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." - Mayer Amschel Rothschild, 1790

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests." - Rothschild Brothers of London, communiqué to associates in New York June 25, 1863

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

“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" — Sir Josiah Stamp, Director, Bank of England, 1940

"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.

"Your money's value is determined by a global casino of unprecedented proportions: $2 trillion are traded per day in foreign exchange markets, 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stockmarkets of the world combined. Only 2% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to the "real" economy reflecting movements of real goods and services in the world, and 98% are purely speculative. This global casino is triggering the foreign exchange crises which shook Mexico in 1994-5, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998. These emergencies are the dislocation symptoms of the old Industrial Age money system." - Bernard Lietaer

"The Theoretical definition of money is: money is anything that people accept as money. Thus money is a social convention: an organe bit of paper with the Queen's picture on it is worth 10 pounds because people in Britain have agreed that it should be so; my cheque is money is you are prepared to accept it, and not otherwise." - Dr Nicholas Barr

"Money is an asset whose value is based on the social trust that it will be exchanged against commodities, services and other assets produced in the future." - Professor Lord Desai

"Money is institutionalised mistrust." - Professor Michael Hussey

The point is that money enables exchange in a society in which trust is low or absent, exchange between strangers. It is a form of balanced exchange, which requires an immediate return for anything given. In contrast, in a society with high trust, generalised exchange is possible, in which there is ongoing give and take, and an assumption of long term, unmeasured balance, but no immediate return on a transaction.

"Endless money forms the sinews of war" - Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Philippics

"The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice." - Aristotle

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. 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. Take this power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for then this world would be a happier and better world to live in.

But 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, c1940 (the second richest man in Britain at the time - was killed).

"This is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism ... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other" - Benjamin Franklin (referring to the final draft of the American Constitution)

"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."- John Adams, Founding Father and 2nd US President

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money 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, 3rd US President

"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 the money and its issuance." - James Madison, 4th US President

"The bold effort the present bank had made to control the government... are but premonitions of the fate that await the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it." - Andrew Jackson, 7th US President

''"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 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, 16th US President

"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"'' - Woodrow Wilson, 28th US President (Just before he died, Wilson is reported to have stated to friends that he had been "deceived" and that "I have betrayed my Country". He referred to the Federal Reserve Act passed during his Presidency.)

"This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill." - Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr (1859 - 1924) Congressman (father of the famous aviator)

"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, 32nd US President

"If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way we let them kill as many as possible." - Harry Truman, 33rd US President

"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything." - Frederick Von Hayek

"Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny." - Robert A Heinlein

"He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours" - Colin Powell (on Saddam Hussein), February 2001

"Terrorism is the war of the poor. War is the terrorism of the rich." - Leon Uris

“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.

"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."" — US President 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.” — US President 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.” — US President James Madison

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

“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.

“The banks do create money. They have been doing it for a long time, but they didn't quite realise 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.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

"All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises, not from the defects of the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation." — John Adams, Founding Father

"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." - President James Madison

"You are a den of vipers and thieves and I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out. If Congress has the right to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, and not to be delegated to individuals or corporations." - Andrew Jackson's address to Congress 1829

"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..... I see in the 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 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 the war." - Abraham Lincoln

"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution - taking from the federal government their power of borrowing." Thomas Jefferson, 1798

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." - Thomas Jefferson, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809). This prophesy has come true.

"In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial Scrip.' We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods and pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to no one. In this manner, by creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay, to anyone.

You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury." - Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become endurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe." - Hazard Circular - London Times 1865

"The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit 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 long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges. The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration. The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government. Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power." - Lincoln Abraham Senate document 23, Page 91. 1865

"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 US, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world." - Otto von Bismark, Chancellor of Germany 1876

"The earth, in its natural, uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race." As the land gets cultivated, "it is the value of the improvement, only, and not the earth itself, that is in individual property. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community a ground-rent..to every person, rich or poor...because it is in lieu of the natural inheritance, which, as a right, belongs to every man, over and above the property he may have created, or inherited from those who did" - Thomas Paine 1796, p. 611; 612-613

"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 Bonaparte, 1815

"If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people." - Thomas Edison, The New York Times, December 6, 1921

"The Central Banks (which charge interest to governments for the money they produce from out of nothing, with no labour or wealth involved) have secured these loans against your future taxes. Without even asking you, a substantial part of your future worth has been put up as collateral. What Central Banks do in a big way with countries, your local bank will replicate on organisations and individuals, using the same slight of hand to produce the funds they lend out of thin air." - Alternative Trading Network

"Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce... And when you realise 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 (assasinated within weeks of release of this statement during first year of his Presidency in 1881)

"Those few who can understand the system (check book money and credit) will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on it favors, that there will be little opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantage that capital derives from the system, will bear it burdens without complaint, and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to their interests." - The Rothschild Brothers of London

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of it laborers, the genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children" — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Since 1940, Washington has spent the unimaginable sum of $20 trillion ($20,000,000,000,000!) on the military--enough money to have provided for adequate nutrition, clean water, electrification, housing, literacy, and basic health care for the world's entire population. In the next four years alone an additional $1.2 trillion will go down the military rathole. Today the U.S. military budget is bigger than that of the rest of the United Nations Security Council members combined. This bloated military establishment exists to protect and serve U.S. capital--not only to extend and maintain its domination in what used to be called the Third World, the oppressed countries, but also vis-a-vis its imperialist allies and rivals." - Richard Becker

"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." - Otto von Bismarck, German Chancellor (1815-1898), after Lincoln assassination.

"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 back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will 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 deposits." - Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920's, the second richest man in Britain

"Because of 'fractional' reserve system, banks, as a whole, can expand our money supply several times, by making loans and investments." "Commercial banks create checkbook money whenever they grant a loan, simply by adding new deposit dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for a borrower's IOU." - Federal Reserve Bank, New York

"The actual process of money creation takes place in commercial banks. As noted earlier, demand liabilities of commercial banks are money.."Confidence in these forms of money also seems to be tied in some way to the fact that assets exist on the books of the government and the banks equal to the amount of money outstanding, even though most of the assets themselves are no more than pieces of paper--.", P.3."Commercial banks create checkbook money whenever they grant a loan, simply by adding new deposit dollars in accounts on their books in exchange for a borrower's IOU.", p. 19. "The 12 regional reserve banks aren't government institutions, but corporations nominally 'owned' by member commercial banks.",
p. 27.- Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

"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 (p15). The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled." - John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it came, where it went - 1975, p29.

"The bank hath benefit of interest on all moneys which it creates out of nothing." - William Patterson (founder of Bank of England)

"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. Banks can in fact inflate, mint, and un-mint the modern ledger-entry currency". Major L. L. B. Angus

"Banks lend by creating credit. They create the means of payment, out of nothing." - Ralph M. Hawtery (Former Secretary of the British Treasury)

"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal — that there is no human relation between master and slave." - Leo Tolstoy

"There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for 20 years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret record." - Carroll Quigley, Georgetown University professor (deceased), in Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, 1966, p.950

"The greatest enemy of mankind is his ignorance of the inherent money power in all of us. When the realization of this comes to man, he will like Samson, push down the walls of his prison." - E.C. Riegel

"In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply."- John Kenneth Galbrath

"Right after the Civil War there was considerable talk about reviving Lincoln's brief experiment with the Constitutional monetary system. Had not the European money-trust intervened, it would have no doubt become an established institution." - W.Cleon Skousen.

"While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for markets and resources, I claim that in reality they are competing for money - using markets and resources to do so. Greed and fear of scarcity are being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely not enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. Money is created when banks lend it into existence When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000."- Bernard Lietaer, Former Central Banker

"In addition to almost unlimited usury, the bankers have another method of drawing vast amounts of wealth. The banks are able to approve or disapprove large loans to large and successful corporations to the extent that refusal of a loan will bring about a reduction in the selling price of the corporation's stock. After depressing the price, the bankers' agents buy large blocks of the company's stock. Then, if the bank suddenly approves a multi-million dollar loan to the company, the stock rises and is then sold for a profit. In this manner, billions of dollars are made with which to buy more stock. This practice is so refined today that the Federal Reserve Board need only announce to the newspapers an increase or decrease in their "discount rate" to send stocks soaring or crashing at their whim. Banks collect billions in interest by loaning to Government and the Corporations!" - Pastor Sheldon Emry
Instances of shrinking money supply with adoption of gold and rejection of silver standard:

"I went to America in the winter of 1872-73, authorised to secure, if I could, the passage of a bill demonetising silver. It was in the interest of those I represented - the governors of the Bank of England - to have it done. By 1873, gold coins were the only form of coin money." -
Ernest Seyd, agent of Bank of England.

"The disaster of the Dark Ages was caused by decreasing money and falling prices... Without money, civilisation could not have had a beginning, and with a diminishing supply, it must languish and unless relieved, finally perish. At the Christian era the metallic money of the Roman Empire amounted to $1,800 million. By the end of the fifteenth century it had shrunk to less than $200,million. History records no other such disastrous transition as that from the Roman Empire to the Dark Ages..." - United States Silver Commission

"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 to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. .. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." -John Danforth, Republican senator from Missouri, reported in the Arizona Republic of April 21, 1992

"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders... The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and... manipulates the credit of the United States." - Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ)

"US foreign policy during the Cold War was not primarily about keeping the USSR out of Western Europe, but rather about promoting the global capitalist system on a worldwide stage. American foreign policy since 1945 has primarily been driven by the goal of being hegemon of the world capitalist economic system. As protector of global capitalism, the United States has replaced the United Kingdom which played this role for more than a century before World War II. Although the 1947-91 Cold War presented an easy-to-understand threat to this objective, US diplomacy in these years was not primarily about keeping the USSR out of Western Europe (the usual explanation for containment), but rather about projecting its own power, globally. It was not about making the world safe for democracy, but about being the leader of the capitalist world, upholder of the international economic system." - Michael Sullivan

"Federal Reserve is not Federal and it has doubtful reserves. The name is an open deception designed to give this private bank the appearance that it is operating in the public's interest, when in fact it is run solely to gain private profit for its select stock holders. It came into being as the result of one of the slickest moves in financial history. On 23rd December 1913 the house of representatives had past the Federal Reserve Act, but it was still having difficulty getting it out of the senate. Most members of congress had gone home for the holidays, but unfortunately the senate had not adjourned sene die (without day) so they were technically still in session. There were only three members still present. On a unanimous consent voice vote the 1913 Federal Reserve Act was passed. No objection was made, possibly because there was no one there to object." from Who owns the FED

The word money came from the Latin word "moneta" which originally meant, "warning." See article on Transforming Money

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