"If the American people ever allow private 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 their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
--Thomas Jefferson

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"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money."

"We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no, Sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors, and a ruined people."
--Daniel Webster

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"Paper money has had the effect in your State [Rhode Island] that it ever will have, to ruin commerce--oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice."
--George Washington

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"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 eternal God, I will rout you out."
--Andrew Jackson (discussing the Bank Renewal bill with a delegation of bankers in 1832)