Broke-Ass Student

Ahh, the whispers of wisdom reflected throughout history. Our Founding Fathers were some pretty smart cookies and here are a few morsels handed down through the ages worth savouring.

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Judge the future by the past. - Patrick Henry (1736-1799)

No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence. - George Washington to James Madison, 1789.

I place economy among the first and most important of republic virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. - Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer, 1816.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. 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. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. - Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, 1802.

If Congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. - Andrew Jackson

I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country. - Andrew Jackson

Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrants. - James Madison

They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. - Plato (429-347 B.C.)

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be. - Thomas Jefferson, on foreign policy.

A small leak can sink a great ship. - Benjamin Franklin

He who tampers with the currency robs labor of its bread … A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. - Daniel Webster

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. - John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 17, 1775.

I have always been afraid of banks. - Andrew Jackson

You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out. - Andrew Jackson, to a delegation of bankers, 1832.

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. - Andrew Jackson, who shut down the Central Bank before re-establishment of the Federal Reserve Central Bank in 1913.

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

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 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

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. - John Maynard Keynes

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