"That same year (1862) The Times of London publishes a story containing the following statement, 'If that mischievous financial policy, which had its origin in the North American Republic, should become indurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.'”- Source: Eustace Mullins' "Secrets Of The Federal Reserve
"The entire banking movement, at all crucial stages, was centralized in the hands of a few men who for years were linked, ideologically and personally, with one another.” Gabriel Kolko
"It will always be impossible to keep a bank solvent by law. The law that specifies the maximum risk a bank may legally take with other people’s money turns out to be a law of minimum security. A good banker will not take a risk simply because the law says he may; he will use his own judgment. On the other hand, a reckless banker will find a way to do what his greed desires, no matter what the law is, even a legal way.” Garet Garret, A BUBBLE THAT BROKE THE WORLD (1932), p. 125 (conclusion to the chapter titled "The Gold Invention”).
"By the time the (16th) Amendment had been approved by the states, the Rockefeller Foundation was in full operation...about the same time that Judge Kenesaw Landis was ordering the breakup of the Standard Oil monopoly...John D...not only avoided taxes by creating four great tax-exempt foundations; he used them as repositories for his 'divested' interests...made his assets non-taxable so that they might be passed down through generations without...estate and gift taxes...Each year the Rockefellers can dump up to half their incomes into their pet foundations and deduct the "donations" from their income tax." Gary Allen
"If no information or return is filed, [the] Internal Revenue Service cannot assess you". Gary Makovski, Special IRS Agent, testifying under oath in US. v. Lloyd
"By 1992, there were more people working for government than for manufacturing companies in the private sector. There are more citizens receiving government checks than there are paying income taxes. When it is possible for people to vote on issues involving the transfer to themselves from others, the ballot box becomes a weapon whereby the majority plunders the minority. That is the point of no return. It is a doomsday mechanism." "The Creature From Jekyll Island", pg. 534-535, G. Edward Griffin
"The blunt reality is that the Rothschild banking dynasty in Europe was the dominant force, both financially and politically, in the formation of the Bank of the United States." G. Edward Griffin (The Creature from Jekyll Island)
"Inflation has now been institutionalized at a fairly constant 5% per year. This has been determined to be the optimum level for generating the most revenue without causing public alarm. A 5% devaluation applies, not only to the money earned this year, but to all that is left over from previous years. At the end of the first year, a dollar is worth 95 cents. At the end of the second year, the 95 cents is reduced again by 5%, leaving its worth at 90 cents, and so on. By the time a person has worked 20 years, the government will have confiscated 64% of every dollar he saved over those years. By the time he has worked 45 years, the hidden tax will be 90%. The government will take virtually everything a person saves over a lifetime." G. Edward Griffin
"No one in America fully understands the constantly changing Internal Revenue Code. Agents of the IRS do not, judges do not, congressmen do not, and most assuredly taxpayers do not." G. Edward Griffin
"Madison, agreeing with the journal of the convention, records that the grant of power to emit bills of credit was refused by a majority of more than four to one. The evidence is perfect; no power to emit paper money was granted to the legislature of the United States." George Bancroft
"Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness." George Bernard Shaw
"Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit." George Carlin
"A policy of subsidizing failures will end in an economy strewn with capital-guzzling industries long past their time of profitability - old companies that cannot create jobs themselves, but can stand in the way of job creation.” George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty
"The IRS is an extraordinary example of the end justifying the means. The means of this agency is growth. It is interesting that the revenue officers within the IRS refer to taxpayers as 'inventory'. The IRS embodies the political realities of the selfish human desire to dominate others. Thus the end of this gigantic pretense of officialdom is power, pure and simple. The meek may inherit the earth, but they will never receive a promotion in an agency where efficiency is measured by the number of seizures of taxpayers' property and by the number of citizens and businesses driven into bankruptcy". George Hansen, Congressman and author of "To Harass Our People"
"We are in the terminal stages of the world's most gigantic pyramid scheme." George Whithurst-Berry Economist/Forecaster
"100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt ... all individual in-come tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government" Grace Commission report submitted to President Ronald Reagan on January 15, 1984
"When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government." Grover Cleveland
"Under the surface, the Rothschilds long had a powerful influence in dictating American financial laws. The law records show that they were powers in the old Bank of the United States ." Gustavus Meyers (History of the Great American Fortunes)
"The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage." Hazel Henderson
"In a recent conversation with an official at the Internal Revenue Service, I was amazed when he told me that 'If the taxpayers of this country ever discover that the IRS operates on 90% bluff the entire system will collapse'." Henry Bellman
"The Federal Reserve Act as it stands seems to me to open the way to a vast inflation of the currency. I do not like to think that any law can be passed that will make it possible to submerge the gold standard in a flood of irredeemable paper currency.” Henry Cabot Lodge Sr., 1913
"The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts.” Henry Ford
"If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability." Henry Ford
"If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you have been content to live in a hovel, the tax gatherer now comes annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry by taxing me more than you. If I have saved while you wasted, I am [taxed] while you are exempt. If a man built a ship, we make him pay for his temerity as though he had done injury to the state; if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax collector upon it as though were a public nuisance.... We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening grain; we fine him who puts up machinery and him who drains a swamp. To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of taxation from productive industry.... The state would say to the producer, "Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose. You shall have your full reward!”" Henry George
"So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent." Henry George
"The Illuminati bankers rule the world through debt, which is money they create out of nothing. They need world government to ensure no country defaults or tries to overthrow them. As long as private bankers, instead of governments, create money the human race is doomed. These bankers and their allies have bought everything and everyone.” Henry Makow
"While vast sums of money are being siphoned off into hidden [military] coffers, Americas schools, hospitals and public services are facing cutbacks and closures." Representative Henry Waxman
"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt." Herbert Hoover
"It is morally wrong for the Government to swindle people out of their property by making false money." Hilaire Belloc, ECONOMICS FOR HELEN (1924), p. 72
"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
"FED intervention in the financial markets is the art and science of running the circus from the money cage." H.L Mencken as paraphrased by Kevin Duffy
"While boasting of our noble deeds we're 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
"We are now permitted to own gold again only because the intention is to force the Canadian/American people onto a strict gold standard while we do not have enough gold to permit this system to operate even marginally. Forcing us onto a gold standard, under the guise of our ‘proven’ inability to manage debt, will complete the destruction of the middle class and finish our subjection to the International Bankers and the UN.” Howard Freeman
"The United States has a system of taxation by confession". Hugo Black, Supreme Court Justice, in U.S.A. Kahriger
"The purpose of the IRS is to collect the proper amount of tax revenues at the least cost to the public, and in a manner that warrants the highest degree of public confidence in our integrity, efficiency and fairness. To achieve that purpose, we will encourage and achieve the highest possible degree of voluntary compliance in accordance with the tax laws and regulations...". Internal Revenue Manual, Chapter 1100, section 1111.1
"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
"If two parties, instead of being a bank and an individual, were an individual and an individual, they could not inflate the circulating medium by a loan transaction, for the simple reason that the lender could not lend what he didn’t have, as banks can do. Only commercial banks and trust companies can lend money that they manufacture by lending it.” Professor Irving Fisher, Yale University, in his book "100% Money”
"Your whole banking system's utterly corrupt. Your lending institutions loused up the system. But there's nobody out there telling you what's wrong with it. So it looks okay to you." Jacque Fresco
"By the experience of commercial nations in all ages it has been found that gold and silver afford the only safe foundation for a monetary system. Confusion has recently been created by variations in the relative value of the two metals, but I confidently believe that arrangements can be made between the leading commercial nations which will secure the general use of both metals. Congress should provide that the compulsory coinage of silver now required by law may not disturb our monetary system by driving either metal out of circulation. If possible, such an adjustment should be made that the purchasing power of every coined dollar will be exactly equal to its debt-paying power in all the markets of the world." James A. Garfield
"The chief duty of the National Government in connection with the currency of the country is to coin money and declare its value. Grave doubts have been entertained whether Congress is authorized by the Constitution to make any form of paper money legal tender. The present issue of United States notes has been sustained by the necessities of war; but such paper should depend for its value and currency upon its convenience in use and its prompt redemption in coin at the will of the holder, and not upon its compulsory circulation. These notes are not money, but promises to pay money. If the holders demand it, the promise should be kept." James A. Garfield
"He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation." James A. Garfield
"The refunding of the national debt at a lower rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country." James A. Garfield
"Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all commerce and industry." President James A. Garfield
"Its contempt for citizens ... is so routine, and so unlimited, that the agency has become a kind of Frankenstein, running wild and terrorizing Americans at will. The IRS hypocritically requires mistake-free returns when its own books are in shambles. It demands exorbitant sums of money without regard to the accuracy of its claims. It doesn’t hesitate to use every possible maneuver to get what it wants, sometimes destroying businesses -- and lives -- in the process." James Bovard
"However accurate or inaccurate the agency’s numbers may be, tax law explicitly presumes that the IRS is always right -- and implicitly presumes that the taxpayer is always wrong -- in any dispute with the government. In many cases, the IRS introduces no evidence whatsoever of its charges; it merely asserts that a taxpayer had a certain amount of unreported income and therefore owes a proportionate amount in taxes, plus interest and penalties." James Bovard
"The politicians don't just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless.” James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union
"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
"There is no free market in the monetary and banking system, but just the opposite: private money has been nationalized, legal tender rules introduced, a huge mess of administration regulations enacted, the interest rate manipulated and most importantly, everything is directed by a monetary central-planning agency: The Central Bank." Jesus Huerta de Soto, October 2010
"America is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world." Jim Rogers
"The world at large does seem to understand innately that governments are bankrupting themselves and destroying paper currency." Jim Rogers, Investment Guru
"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 (1735-1826), 2nd President of the United States letter to Thomas Jefferson (1787)
"Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good." John Adams
"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)
"I have ways of making money that you know nothing of." John D. Rockefeller
"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.
"[N]ever before have so many Americans in all classes of society depended so heavily on government. (Taxes to support government spending now consume 40 percent of a typical American family's earnings. Put another way, the average American family works about three hours a day for tax collectors.)" John Harmon McElroy, AMERICAN BELIEFS (1999), pp. 223-224.
"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled." John Kenneth Galbraith
"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 power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create." John Marshall, Supreme Court Chief Justice
"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward." John Maynard Keynes
"By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." John Maynard Keynes
"If, however, a government refrains from regulations and allows matters to take their course, essential commodities soon attain a level of price out of the reach of all but the rich, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent, and the fraud upon the public can be concealed no longer." John Maynard Keynes
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency. . . Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means 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 which not one man in a million can diagnose." John Maynard Keynes
"Should government refrain from regulation and taxation, the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.” Lord John Maynard Keynes, "The Economic Consequences of Peace”
"Alan Greenspan isn't the "Maestro". He's Oz - working behind the curtains, leaning into the microphone, pressing buttons that blow smoke and fire, but not really having much power at all. Scarecrow already has a brain. For the past several years, commercial and industrial loans and consumer credit exploded quite simply because rabidly eager borrowers were able to find rabidly eager lenders. And now, both forms of credit (as well as commercial paper issuance) are declining because borrowers are saturated with debt and lenders are increasingly skittish of credit risk." John P. Hussman, Ph.D
"The Federal Reserve is not an agency of Government. It is a private banking monopoly.. The policies of the monarch are always those of his creditors." Congressman John. R. Rarick
"The Internal Revenue Service is everything the so-called tax protesters said it was; nonresponsive, unable to withstand scrutiny, tyrannical, and oblivious to the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution." Joseph Banister
"I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave." Joseph Campbell
"False riches, consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons." Joseph Franklin Rutherford
"I have sat on many a promotion panel where the first question of panel members was 'How many seizures have you made?"'. Joseph R. Smith, eighteen-year IRS agent, testifying before Congress
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other peoples money - only for wanting to keep your own money." Joseph Sobran
"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was every invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin .. Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again .. Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in .. But if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit." Sir Josiah Stamp, President, Bank of England, 1920's
"We fix the price of gold and silver to make them valuable or not.” J. P. Morgan, in a letter to his son
"Only the rare taxpayer would be likely to know that he could refuse to produce his records to IRS agents... Who would believe the ironic truth that the cooperative taxpayer fares much worse than the individual who relies upon his constitutional rights". Judge Cummings, U.S. Federal Judge, in US. v. Dickerson (7th Circuit 1969)
"I think that if you were to go back and try top find and review the ratification of the 16th Amendment, which was the internal revenue, the income tax, I think that if you went back and examined that carefully, you would find that a sufficient number of States never ratified that Amendment”. U.S. District Court Judge James C. Fox (Sullivan vs United States, 2003).
"Social Security is an unfunded pay-as-you-go system, fundamentally flawed and analogous in design to illegal pyramid schemes. Government accounting creates the illusion of a trust fund, but in fact, excess receipts are spent immediately. The government’s own actuaries predict the system will be bankrupt by 2030, but Social Security could face financial crisis as early as 2014. Moreover, Social Security’s relatively poor rate of return makes the program an increasingly worse investment for today’s young worker. ... The system design itself is fundamentally flawed and cannot be repaired. It must instead be replaced by one derived from free markets and operated by free citizenry making individual economic decisions in their own self-interest. ... Reform is long overdue. If we fail to act soon, our children will either inherit a bankrupt system or be forced to pay an impossibly high level of taxes. Only private pensions with individual property rights to accumulate fund balances can create a secure pension system. Chile, which privatized its system in 1981, provides evidence of such a system’s effectiveness." Karl Borden
"Historically, the United States has been a hard money country. Only [since 1913] has the United States operated on a fiat money system. During this period, paper money has depreciated over 87%. During the preceding 140 year period, the hard currency of the United States had actually maintained its value. Wholesale prices in 1913... were the same as in 1787." Kenneth Gerbino
"It is the paper money created out of thin air that creates the unfair distribution of wealth that is making the middle class fall more behind and the poor more poor. Newly created money and credit in a paper money system benefits those that can access the money first and buy capital goods and real property at one price before the new money circulates and makes all prices go up. Wages also do not keep up with inflation and that creates another squeeze on the middle class." Kenneth Gerbino
"The surest way to overthrow an existing social order is to debauch the currency.” Lenin
"The Federal Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities.” Lewis vs. United States 9th Circuit
"The regional Federal Reserve banks are not government agencies. ...but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations." Lewis vs. United States, 680 F. 2d 1239 9th Circuit 1982
"If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, becomes entrenched, then that Government will issue it’s own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on it’s commerce. It will become prosperous to a degree which is without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will migrate to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe". -- The London Times responding to Lincoln's decision to issue government Greenbacks to finance the Civil War, rather than agree to private banker's loans at 30% interest.
"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
"The Great Depression was not accidental, it was a carefully contrived occurrence. The international Bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.” Louis McFadden
"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 (Rep. Pa)
"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." Louis T. McFadden - (Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency) quoted in the New York Times (June 1930)
"Mr. Chairman, when the Fed was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world system was being set up here... and that this country was to supply the financial power to an international superstate." Speech on the House Floor, June 10, 1932 Louis T. McFadden (1876-1936) U.S. Rep., Pennsylvania (R)
"Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private 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." Louis T. McFadden, Congressional Record 12595-12603 June 10, 1932
"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
"When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure. Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is - the FED has usurped the government ... It was not accidental [the 1929 stock-market "crash"]. It was a carefully contrived occurrence ... The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all." Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking Committee
"The abhorrence of the gold standard is inspired by the superstition that omnipotent governments can create wealth out of little scraps of paper." Ludwig von Mises
"Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer." Ludwig von Mises
"The international gold standard works without any action on the part of governments." Ludwig von Mises
"Dear Sir: It is advisable to do all in your power to sustain such prominent daily and weekly newspapers... as will oppose the issuing of greenback paper money, and that you also withhold patronage or favours from all applicants who are not willing to oppose the Government issue of money. Let the Government issue the coin and the banks issue the paper money of the country...To restore to circulation the Government issue of money, will be to provide the people with money, and will therefore seriously affect your individual profit as bankers and lenders". Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
"It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that." Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war, power, and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are in favour of, for slavery is but the owning of labour and carries with it the care for the labourer, while the European plan, led on by England, is for capital to control labour by controlling the wages. THIS CAN BE DONE BY CONTROLLING THE MONEY". Triumphant plutocracy; the story of American public life from 1870 to 1920, by Lynn Wheeler
"And if the power to tax money is a power to prohibit money, then it follows that the power of congress to tax all other property than money, is a power to prohibit all other property than money; and a power to prohibit all other property than money, is a power to give monopolies to all such other property as congress may not choose to prohibit; or may. choose to specially license." Lysander Spooner in a Letter To Grover Cleveland
"As if to place beyond controversy the fact, that the court may forever hereafter be relied on to sanction every usurpation and crime that congress will ever dare to put into the form of a statute, without the slightest color of authority from, the constitution, necessity, utility, justice, or reason, it has, on three separate occasions, announced its sanction of the monopoly of money, as finally established by congress in 1868, and continued in force ever since.
This monopoly is established by a prohibitory tax --- a tax of ten per cent. --- on all notes issued for circulation as money, other than the notes of the United States and the national banks.
This ten per cent. is called a "tax," but is really a penalty, and is intended as such, and as nothing else. Its whole purpose is --- not to raise revenue --- but solely to establish a monopoly of money, by prohibiting the issue of all notes intended for circulation as money, except those issued, or specially licensed, by the government itself." Lysander Spooner in a Letter To Grover Cleveland
"But it will be said that these taxes or duties are laid to raise revenue for the support of the government. Be it so, for the sake of the argument. All taxes, levied upon a man's property for the support of government, without his consent, are mere robbery; a violation of his natural right of property." Lysander Spooner in a Letter To Grover Cleveland
"But will the monopolists of money give up their monopoly? Certainly not voluntarily. They will do it only upon compulsion. They will hold on to it as long as they own control governments as they do now. And why will they do so? Because to give up their monopoly would be to give up their control of those great armies of servants --- the wage laborers --- from whom all their wealth is derived, and whom they can now coerce by the alternative of starvation, to labor for them at just such prices as they (the monopolists of money) shall choose to pay." Lysander Spooner in a Letter To Grover Cleveland
"If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists." Lysander Spooner in a Letter to Grover Cleveland
"It was once said, in this country, that taxation without consent was robbery. And a seven years' war was fought to maintain that principle. But if that principle were a true one in behalf of three millions of men, it is an equally true one in behalf of three men, or of one man." Lysander Spooner in a Letter to Grover Cleveland
"The power [of coining money] itself is a frivolous one, of little or no utility; for the weighing and assaying of metals is a thing so easily done, and can be done by so many different persons, that there is certainly no necessity for it being done at all by a government,. And it would undoubtedly have been far better if all coins - whether coined by governments or individuals - had all been made into pieces bearing simply the names of pounds, ounces, pennyweights, etc., and containing just the amounts of pure metal described by those weights. The coins would have then been regarded as only so much metal; and as having only the same value as the same amount of metal in any other form. Men would then have known exactly how much of certain metals they were buying, selling, and promising to pay. And all the jugglery, cheating, and robbery that governments have practiced, and licensed individuals to practice - by coining pieces bearing the same names, but having different amounts of metal - would have been avoided." Lysander Spooner
"The power that has been thus usurped by governments, to arbitrarily prohibit or qualify all contracts that are naturally and intrinsically jet and lawful, has been the great, perhaps the greatest, of all the instrumentalities, by which, in this, as in other countries, nearly all the wealth, accumulated by the labor of the many, has been, and is now, transferred into the pockets of the few.
It is by this arbitrary power over contracts, that the monopoly of money is sustained. Few people have any real perception of the power, which this monopoly gives to the holders of it, over the industry and traffic of all other persons. And the one only purpose of the monopoly is to enable the holders of it to rob everybody else in the prices of their labor, and the products of their labor." Lysander Spooner in a Letter To Grover Cleveland
"That any government, that licenses a small amount of an article of such universal necessity as money, and that gives the control of it into a few hands, selected by itself, and then prohibits any and all other money --- that is intrinsically honest and valuable --- palpably violates all other men's natural right to make their own contracts, and infallibly proves its purpose to be to enable the few holders of the licensed money to rob all other persons in the prices of their labor and property." Lysander Spooner in a Letter To Grover Cleveland
"That your whole claim of a right to any man's money for the support of your government, without his consent, is the merest farce and fraud, is proved by the fact that you have no such evidence of your right to take it, as would be required of you, by one of your own courts, to prove a debt of five dollars, that might be honestly due you.
You and your lawmakers have no such evidence of your right of dominion over the people of this country, as would be required to prove your right to any material property, that you might have purchased." Lysander Spooner in a Letter to Grover Cleveland
"This prohibition upon the issue of all notes, except those issued, or specially licensed, by the government, is a prohibition upon all freedom of industry and traffic. It is a prohibition upon the exercise of men's natural right to lend and hire such money capital as all men need to enable them to create and distribute wealth, and supply their own wants, and provide for their own happiness. Its whole purpose is to reduce, as far as possible, the great body of the people to the condition of servants to a few --- a condition but a single grade above that of chattel slavery --- in which their labor, and the products of their labor, may be extorted from them at such prices only as the holders of the monopoly may choose to give." Lysander Spooner in a Letter To Grover Cleveland
"Who are ever taxed? Individuals only. Who have property that can be taxed? Individuals only. Who can give their consent to be taxed? Individuals only. Who are ever taxed without their consent? Individuals only. Who, then, are robbed, if taxed without their consent? Individuals only.
If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, a single honest dollar in its treasury.
If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized." Lysander Spooner in a Letter To Grover Cleveland
"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 unmint the modern ledger-entry currency." Major L. L. B. Angus
"I think the terror most people are concerned with is the IRS.” Malcolm Forbes, when asked if he was afraid of terrorism
"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC
"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin" Mark Twain
"The wages of the average American worker, after inflation and taxes, have decreased 17% since 1973, the only Western industrial nation to so suffer". Martin Gross, author of "The Tax Racket: Government Extortion From A to Z"
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom." Martin Luther King Jr.
"That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money." Marriner Stoddard Eccles
"Allow me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes it's laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild 1827 (Elite Banking Family)
"The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government." Milton Friedman
"Inflation is taxation without representation." Milton Friedman
"Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist." Milton Friedman
"The actual process of money creation takes place primarily in banks. Bankers discovered that they could make loans merely by giving their promise to pay, or bank notes, to borrowers. In this way banks began to create money. Transaction deposits are the modern counterpart of bank notes. It was a small step from printing notes to making book entries crediting deposits of borrowers, which the borrowers in turn could ‘spend’ by writing checks, thereby ‘printing’ their own money.” Modern Money Mechanics, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
"[Every circulating FRN] represents a one dollar debt to the Federal Reserve system." Money Facts, House Banking and Currency Committee
"Our tax system is based on individual self-assessment and voluntary compliance." Mortimer Caplin
"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
