A Look Back on Currency and Banks...

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their  currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks...will deprive the people of  all property until their children 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.

... The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. -Thomas Jefferson

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. -James Madison

The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and  credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of  consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. -Abraham  Lincoln

Issue of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to...provisions [which] would place our currency and credit system in private hands. - Theodore Roosevelt