Honest Abe

"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

"If the American People ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, 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 occupied. The issuing power of money should be taken from the bankers and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies."
--Thomas Jefferson

"The Federal Reserve Banks are privately owned, locally controlled corporations"
--Lewis vs. U.S., 680 F.2d 1239, 1241 (1982)

"From a legal standpoint these banks are private corporations, organized under a special act of Congress, namely, the Federal Reserve Act. They are not in the strict sense of the word, 'Government banks'."
--William P.G. Harding, Governor of the Federal Reserve Board (1921)

"It is well enough that the 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, founder of the Ford Motor Company

"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.... Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth.... [Gold] stands as a protector of property rights."
"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' 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. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."
--Alan Greenspan

"Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national ban with State capital and an exclusive monopoly."
--Karl Marx, 5th Plank of the Communist Manifesto, 1848

"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