Quotes - Thomas Jefferson thinks banks are more dangerous than armies

This page contains a quote used by conspiracy theorists that has been further researched. For more information about our quotes database, please see the introduction.

Quote

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies... If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency... the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Quote Status:	Mixed Origins
Attributed to:	Thomas Jefferson
Category:	Central Banking; Banking
Submitted By:	Edward L Winston

Actual Details

When searching for it, I noticed it was attributed to a letter that simply didn't exist. I did find letters that supposedly contained this quote[1]. But the other sentences in these letters were actually from different letters to different people[2]. The entire quote in the film cannot be attributed to Thomas Jefferson, at all, anywhere. I searched all his complete works. It was fabricated from somewhere as far as I can tell. In letters, though, I did find that Thomas Jefferson was worried about banks being able to create their own currency, the exact thing the Central Bank system prevents.


[1] http://www.sitater.com/home/thomas/tmas_01.htm
[2] http://butr.me/1p

Seen

This quote can be found in so many places I might as well mention the places it's not mentioned. To be fair, so far on this site it's been mentioned by Alex Jones and in Part III of Zeitgeist, The Movie