We have been blessed with many great Americans who have fought for this country's unique form of liberty and the ability to pursue the American Dream. The following are some of the things they've said, and some of the warnings they've hoped we would heed. Listen to them and understand this is not the idle talk of evening news anchors or blow hard politicians trying to get elected:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.
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.
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. I intend to rout you out, and by the grace of the Eternal God, will rout you out.
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.
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.
Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. And when you realize 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.
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 its laborers, the genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children.
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
Only Americans can hurt America.
Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people.
There is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.
The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.
Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain.
Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson.
"...100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt... all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government."
I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, 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 civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.
I had never thought the Federal Reserve Bank System would prove such a failure. The country is in a state of irretrievable bankruptcy.
The Federal Reserve (privately owned banks) are one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever seen.
We have what is known as the Federal Reserve Bank System. That system is not owned by the Government. Many people think that it is because it says "Federal Reserve." It belongs to private banks, private corporations. So we have farmed out to the Federal Reserve Banking System that which is owned exclusively, wholly, one hundred percent to the private banks—we have farmed out to them the privilege of issuing the Government's money!
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
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.
The youth who can solve the money question will do more for the world than all the professional soldiers of history.
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.
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be... The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.
Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.
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.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money.
The increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve Banks from 143 Million dollars in 1913 to 45 Billion dollars in 1949 went directly to the private stockholders of the [Federal Reserve] banks.
[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... 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.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most mean dread it.
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.
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.
This regionalization is in keeping with the Tri-Lateral Plan which calls for a gradual convergence of East and West, ultimately leading toward the goal of one world government. National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept.
We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN's founders.
We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans.
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.
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.
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.
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. 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 is able to diagnose.
The way to crush the bourgeoisie (middle class) is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire… The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply.