Quotes about banking
page 8

“Social ownership and operation of the basic industries, and especially socialized banking and credit”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)
Context: In three ways unemployment would be reduced. First... by greater equalization of purchasing power and consequent stimulus in the form of effective demand. Second, by utilizing the national credit and socialized industries for the creation of new industries and the extension of existing ones.... Social ownership and operation of the basic industries, and especially socialized banking and credit, would greatly facilitate the task of shifting the masses of unemployed into productive channels. Third, if necessary, by shortening working hours and dividing the available work among all the people.

Fitz-Greene Halleck photo

“This bank-note world.”

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790–1867) American writer

Alnwick Castle.

Thomas Jefferson photo

“Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

11 September 1813, ME 13:361
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)
Context: The question will be asked and ought to be looked at, what is to be the resource if loans cannot be obtained? There is but one, "Carthago delenda est." Bank paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs. It is the only fund on which they can rely for loans; it is the only resource which can never fail them, and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose. Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as may be found necessary, thrown into circulation will take the place of so much gold and silver, which last, when crowded, will find an efflux into other countries, and thus keep the quantum of medium at its salutary level. Let banks continue if they please, but let them discount for cash alone or for treasury notes.

Larry Niven photo

“From the beginning there had been a revolutionary group. Its name had changed several times, and Matt had no idea what it was now. He had never known a revolutionary. He had no particular desire to be one. They accomplished nothing, except to fill the Hospital's organ banks.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: A Gift From Earth (1968), Ch. 2 : The Sons Of Earth
Context: From the beginning there had been a revolutionary group. Its name had changed several times, and Matt had no idea what it was now. He had never known a revolutionary. He had no particular desire to be one. They accomplished nothing, except to fill the Hospital's organ banks. How could they, when the crew controlled every weapon and every watt of power on Mount Lookitthat? If this was a nest of rebels, then they had worked out a good cover. Many of the merrymakers had no hearing aids, and these seemed to be the ones who didn't know anyone here. Like Matt himself. In the midst of a reasonably genuine open-house brawl, certain people listened to voices only they could hear.

Bill Bailey photo
Walter Cronkite photo

“The battle for the airwaves cannot be limited to only those who have the bank accounts to pay for the battle and win it.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

Free the Airwaves! (2002)
Context: The battle for the airwaves cannot be limited to only those who have the bank accounts to pay for the battle and win it. Democracy is in danger. Seats in Congress, seats in the state legislature, that big seat in the White House itself, can be purchased by those who have the greatest campaign resources, who have the largest bank accounts or own riches.
That, I submit to you, is no democracy. It is an oligarchy of the already powerful. It is no less than a conspiracy of the powerful to deny access to government to those who literally cannot afford to run for public office with any realistic hope of getting elected.

Thomas Jefferson photo

“Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water, our deluded citizens are clamoring for more banks”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=807&chapter=88152&layout=html&Itemid=27 (6 January 1816) ME 14:384
1810s
Context: Like a dropsical man calling out for water, water, our deluded citizens are clamoring for more banks, more banks. The American mind is now in that state of fever which the world has so often seen in the history of other nations. We are under the bank bubble, as England was under the South Sea bubble, France under the Mississippi bubble, and as every nation is liable to be, under whatever bubble, design, or delusion may puff up in moments when off their guard. We are now taught to believe that legerdemain tricks upon paper can produce as solid wealth as hard labor in the earth. It is vain for common sense to urge that nothing can produce nothing; that it is an idle dream to believe in a philosopher’s stone which is to turn everything into gold, and to redeem man from the original sentence of his Maker, “in the sweat of his brow shall he eat his bread.”

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

"The Sentinel" (1948), originally titled "Sentinel of Eternity" this is the short story which later provided the fundamental ideas for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) written by Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.
1940s
Context: I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait.
I do not think we will have to wait for long

Thomas Campbell photo

“On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,
No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

The Harper, st. 1 (1799)
Context: On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,
No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;
No harp like my own could so cheerily play,
And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.

Larry Niven photo

“Any citizen, with the help of the organ banks, can live as long as it takes his central nervous system to wear out.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Millard Parlette's notes, in Ch. 7 : The Bleeding Heart
A Gift From Earth (1968)
Context: Any citizen, with the help of the organ banks, can live as long as it takes his central nervous system to wear out. This can be a very long time if his circulatory system is kept functioning. … But the citizen, cannot take more out of the organ banks than goes into them. He must do his utmost to see that they are supplied. … The only feasible method of supplying the organ banks is through execution of criminals. … A criminal's pirated body can save a dozen lives. There is now no valid argument against capital punishment for any given crime; for all such argument seeks to prove that killing a man does society no good.
Hence the citizen, who wants to live as long and as healthily as possible, will vote any crime into a capital crime if the organ banks are short of material. … Cite Earth's capital punishment for false advertising, income tax evasion, air pollution, having children without a license.
The wonder was that it had taken so long to pass these laws.

Helen Thomas photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“The best efforts of human scientists in this direction seemed comparable to those of Stone Age men trying to break through the armour of a bank vault with flint axes.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

2010: Odyssey Two (1982), Ch. 43: Thought Experiment
1980s
Context: Plans for the final assault on Big Brother had already been worked out and agreed upon with Mission Control. Leonov would move in slowly, probing at all frequencies, and with steadily increasing power — constantly reporting back to Earth at every moment. When final contact was made, they would try to secure samples by drilling or laser spectroscopy; no one really expected these endeavours to succeed, as even after a decade of study TMA-1 resisted all attempts to analyse its material. The best efforts of human scientists in this direction seemed comparable to those of Stone Age men trying to break through the armour of a bank vault with flint axes.

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“DiLorenzo thinks that slavery was not the real issue in the Civil War, that it was the Whig economic program. Banks, tariffs, internal improvements, and what he calls corporate welfare. And he thinks that the slavery question was really only a sham that was not the real question; it was not the real issue. That's very strange for anybody reading the Lincoln-Douglas debates, since the subject of tariffs was never mentioned.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The South was a Closed Society
Context: DiLorenzo thinks that slavery was not the real issue in the Civil War, that it was the Whig economic program. Banks, tariffs, internal improvements, and what he calls corporate welfare. And he thinks that the slavery question was really only a sham that was not the real question; it was not the real issue. That's very strange for anybody reading the Lincoln-Douglas debates, since the subject of tariffs was never mentioned. The only time the word is used, I think, is when Douglas says that the tariff was one of the questions that the two parties used to discuss. But the only subject discussed in the Lincoln-Douglas debates was slavery in the territories.

Reza Pahlavi photo
Marcin Malek photo
Elizabeth Warren photo
Charles Darwin photo

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Last paragraph of the first edition (1859). Only use of the term "evolve" or "evolution" in the first edition.
In the second http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F376&viewtype=image (1860) through sixth (1872) editions, Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" to read:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XIV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 489-90 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F373&viewtype=image

Nyanaponika Thera photo
Amit Shah photo
Ernest Becker photo

“When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, how openly he shows it as a child, then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. In our culture anyway, especially in modern times, the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it. Tell a young man that he is entitled to be a hero and he will blush. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, a bigger car, brighter children. But underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it in concerns of smaller scope. Occasionally someone admits that he takes his heroism seriously, which gives most of us a chill, as did U.S. Congressman Mendel Rivers, who fed appropriations to the military machine and said he was the most powerful man since Julius Caesar. We may shudder at the crassness of earthly heroism, of both Caesar and his imitators, but the fault is not theirs, it is in the way society sets up its hero system and in the people it allows to fill its roles. The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to societies as they now are.”

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Josh Billings photo
Adolf Hitler photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Claude Louis Hector de Villars photo

“I am going to drive your enemies so far that they shall not again see the banks of the Scheldt; and by a battle on my arrival, to regain all that has been taken from your majesty.”

Claude Louis Hector de Villars (1653–1734) Marshal General of France

Villars to Louis XIV upon departing for the 1709 campaign against the Allies, quoted in Prince Eugene's memoirs
Source: https://ia800303.us.archive.org/11/items/memoirsofprincee00lign/memoirsofprincee00lign.pdf

Tulsi Gabbard photo

“While 800,000 Americans wait and work without pay, the administration bows to mortgage industry lobbyists. The blatant corruption and greed of an administration who puts banks above people is the root cause of our broken system.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

(12 January 2019) https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1084199593926189057
Twitter account, January 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo

“Financial Services is one of just four exclusive committees in the House. It oversees big banks, lending, & the financial sector….”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter post, https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1085380063112105984 (15 January 2019)
Twitter Quotes (2019), January 2019

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo

“When we talk about the concern of the environment as an elitist concern, one year ago I was waitressing in a taco shop in Downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago. This is not an elitist issue; this is a quality-of-life issue. You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids have—their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist… People are dying. This should not be a partisan issue. This is about our constituents and all of our lives. Iowa, Nebraska, broad swaths of the Midwest are drowning right now, underwater. Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back. And we’re here, and people are more concerned about helping oil companies than helping their own families? I don’t think so…This is about American lives. And it should not be partisan. Science should not be partisan. We are facing a national crisis. And if… if we tell the American public that we are more willing to invest and bail out big banks than we are willing to invest in our farmers and our urban families, then I don’t know what we’re here doing…”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

“Tell That to the Families in Flint”: AOC Demolishes GOP Claim That Green New Deal Is “Elitist”, DemocracyNow, https://www.democracynow.org/2019/3/28/tell_that_to_the_families_in<BR> Video only: This is not an elitist issue: AOC on... inaction on climate change –video, Guardian News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5M8vvEhCFI (26 March 2019)
Quotes (2019)

Cyril Ramaphosa photo

“The manifesto had a paragraph on a wish and an aspiration, acknowledging that the Reserve Bank is independent and that there is no intention whatsoever to tamper or tinker with the independence of the central bank. The wish that is expressed is, that as it goes ahead with monetary policy machinations, it will keep an eye on employment.”

Cyril Ramaphosa (1952) 5th President of South Africa

Answering a question by JSE chairperson Nyembezi-Heita in Rosebank, on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, as quoted by Carien du Plessis in Ramaphosa and Magashule contradict each other on Reserve Bank nationalisation https://www.msn.com/en-za/money/politics/ramaphosa-and-magashule-contradict-each-other-on-reserve-bank-nationalisation/ar-BBSjJd5?ocid=spartanntp, Daily Maverick (17 January 2019)

Marco Rizzo photo

“Gualtieri is just a mere political enforcer of the will of banks and big finance. Direct expression of the economic powers that supported his appointment, he is the representative of the most hostile elements to the workers, their interests and their aspirations.”

Marco Rizzo (1959) Italian politician

Zoro e i "4 ministri comunisti al governo" https://www.lantidiplomatico.it/dettnews-zoro_e_i_4_ministri_comunisti_al_governo/82_30601/, 12 September 2019

Walther Funk photo
Walther Funk photo

“A Reichsbank president who was totally ignorant of what went in and out of the vaults of his bank.”

Walther Funk (1890–1960) German economist and politician

Robert H. Jackson

Roberto Saviano photo

“Unlawful revenue which, after being conveniently cleaned, is then reinvested within the legal economy: polluting it, corrupting it, forging it, killing it. Whether it’s reinvested in the London property market, in Parisian restaurants, or in hostels on the French Riviera. Drug trafficking money will buy homes that honest folk can no longer afford; it will open shops that will sell at more competitive prices than legitimate shops; it will start businesses that can afford to be more competitive than clean businesses. But one thing must be clear: these businesses are not interested in being successful; the main purpose for which they were created was to launder money, turning money that shouldn’t even exist into clean and usable money. In silence, illegal assets are moving around and undermining our economy and our democracies. In silence. But it doesn’t stop here; organised crime is providing us with a winning economic model. Organised crime is the only segment of global economy to have not been affected by the financial crisis; to have profited from the crisis, to have fed on the crisis, to have contributed to the crisis. And it’s in the crisis that it finds its satellite activities, such as usury, gambling, counterfeiting. But the most important – and most alarming – aspect of this issue is that it’s exactly in times of crisis that criminal organisations find their safe haven in banks.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

Raghuram G. Rajan photo

“Incidentally, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Raghuram Rajan, has single-handedly brought a huge slowdown to the Indian manufacturing sector and exports. As a doctor, he has believed that the best way to bring down the temperature of a patient (i. e., inflation) is to kill him (investment starvation).”

Raghuram G. Rajan (1963) Indian economist

Subramanian Swamy, politician and economist, as quoted in " The way out of the economic tailspin http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-way-out-of-the-economic-tailspin/article7662610.ece", The Hindu (18 September 2015)

Raghuram G. Rajan photo

“Mr Raghuram Rajan is an outstanding man who understands central banking. He is probably only one in the world among the crowds of professors at central banks that actually has a good grip on monetary policies and what you can or cannot achieve with them. He should get the Noble Prize in economics but the others are all money printers at heart, all of them.”

Raghuram G. Rajan (1963) Indian economist

Marc Faber, economist, as quoted in " Raghuram Rajan only central banker I trust, he should get Nobel in Economics: Marc Faber http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-08-12/news/65490521_1_marc-faber-rbi-governor-boom-doom-report", The Economic Times (12 August 2015)

Chandra Shekhar photo
Chandra Shekhar photo

“When in Congress, he, along with the other Young Turks, actively promoted bank nationalization and the abolition of privy purses and privileges.”

Chandra Shekhar (1927–2007) Indian politician

In p. 61
The Long March: Profile of Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar

Shaun Micallef photo
Sadegh Hedayat photo
Harold L. Ickes photo
Keshub Chunder Sen photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Will Durant photo
Gregory Benford photo

“A rich bank account did not mean rich ideas; in fact, often the reverse. The bigger your ass, the more you want to cover it.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Source: Short fiction, The Man Who Sold The Stars (2013), p. 338

Elizabeth Warren photo

“The American people deserve a Congress that worries less about helping big banks, and more about helping regular people who have been cheated on mortgages, on credit cards, on student loans and on credit reports.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

As quoted in "Sen. Elizabeth Warren slams Republicans: Worry less about helping big banks" by Eric W. Dolan, in Raw Story (12 March 2013) https://www.rawstory.com/2013/03/sen-elizabeth-warren-slams-republicans-worry-less-about-helping-big-banks/
2013

Joe Biden photo

“We got a real clear picture of what they all value. Every Republican's voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing. Romney wants to let the — he said in the first hundred days he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, 'unchain Wall Street.'”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

They're going to put y'all back in chains.
Campaign speech in Danville, Virginia, criticizing Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the Republican speech, quoted in * 2012-08-14
VP Biden Says Republicans Are 'Going to Put Y'all Back in Chains'
Jake Tapper
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/08/vp-biden-says-republicans-are-going-to-put-yall-back-in-chains/
2012

Bernie Sanders photo

“Americans' right to free speech should not be proportionate to their bank accounts.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2014-09-07
Tom Udall and Bernie Sanders
The Threat to American Democracy
Politico
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/the-threat-to-american-democracy-110683
2010s

William Wordsworth photo
Ounsi el-Hajj photo
Richard D. Wolff photo

“A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the "special interests" of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That's why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results. Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today's social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism's failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today's social agenda.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Richard D. Wolff photo
Richard D. Wolff photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Benjamin Creme photo
J. P. Morgan photo

“[Credit] is an evidence of banking, but it is not the money itself. Money is gold, and nothing else.”

J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) American financier, banker, philanthropist and art collector

Testimony to the Pujo Committee (1912)

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have broken the glass of the fire-alarm and have nothing to do but to wait.
I do not think we will have to wait for long”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

"The Sentinel" (1948), originally titled "Sentinel of Eternity" this is the short story which later provided the fundamental ideas for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) written by Clarke and Stanley Kubrick. Full text in 10 Story Fantasy, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1951), p. 41 https://archive.org/details/10_Story_Fantasy_v01n01_1951-Spring_Tawrast-EXciter/page/n39. Two versions of the next to the last sentence have been widely published since at least 1951, the other being: "If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait."
1940s

Hendrik Willem Mesdag photo

“And you know, if my wife haven't said some forty years ago: do it, let's go to Brussels to study painting, [with a. o. Willem Roelofs ], then I probably would never have left my business [in banking].”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in het Nederlands:) En zie je, als mijn vrouw zo'n veertig jaar geleden niet gezegd had: doe 't maar, laten we maar gaan naar Brussel om te gaan studeren in schilderen, bij o.a. nl:Willem Roelofs, dan was 'k waarschijnlijk nooit uit mijn zaken getrokken.

Quote of Mesdag; as cited by nl:Marie Joseph Brusse, in his article 'Onder de menschen. Een gouden schilders-bruiloft', in Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant', 11 March, 1906
after 1880

George Monbiot photo
Wang Anshi photo

“Green in the spring winds
the south bank of the Yangtse
When will the bright moon
light my journey home?”

Wang Anshi (1021–1086) Song Dynasty chancellor and poet

(zh-CN) 春风又绿江南岸,明月何时照我还?

《泊船瓜洲》

William Bartram photo
William Bartram photo

“Should I say, that the river (in this place) from shore to shore, and perhaps near half a mile above and below me, appeared to be one solid bank of fish, of various kinds, pushing through this narrow pass of San Juan's into the little lake, on their return down the river, and that the alligators were in such incredible numbers, and so close from shore to shore, that it would have easy to have walked across on their heads, had the animals been harmless? What expressions can sufficiently declare the shocking scene that for some minutes continued, whilst this mighty army of fish were forcing the pass? During this attempt, thousands, I may say hundreds of thousands, of them were caught and swallowed by the devouring alligators. I have seen an alligator take up out of the water several great fish at a time, and just squeeze them betwixt his jaws, while the tails of the great trout flapped about his eyes and lips, ere he had swallowed them. The horrid noise of their closing jaws, their plunging amidst the broken banks of fish, and rising with their prey some feet upright above the water, the floods of water and blood rushing out of their mouths, and the clouds of vapor issuing from their wide nostrils, were truly frightful.”

William Bartram (1739–1823) American naturalist

[Van Doren, Mark, The travels of William Bartram, An American Bookshelf, volume 3, 118–119, 1928, New York, Macy-Masius, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b281934&view=1up&seq=124]
Travels of William Bartram (1791)

Ellen Brown photo

“Money might... indeed become a servant of humanity, transformed from a tool of oppression into a means of securing common prosperity. But first the central bank needs to become a public servant. It needs to be made a public utility, responsive to the needs of the people and the economy.”

Ellen Brown (1945) American writer

The Fed’s “Emergency Measures” Are Becoming the New Normal, TruthOut https://truthout.org/articles/qe-forever-the-feds-dramatic-about-face/ (27 February 2019)

George Galloway photo

“If the Bank of England is “independent” who took the decision to steal Venezuela’s gold?”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/georgegalloway/status/1090754716227768321 (30 January 2019)

Joseph E. Stiglitz photo
William Henry Sleeman photo

“The old city of Ajoodhea is a ruin, with the exception of a few buildings along the bank of the river raised by wealthy Hindoos in honour of Ram, who once lived and reigned there, and is believed by all Hindoos to have been an incarnation of Vishnoo.”

William Henry Sleeman (1788–1856) British colonial administrator

Vol. 2, p. 27
‘A Journey Through The Kingdom Of Oudh (1849-1850)’ , 1858, quoted . in Kishore, Kunal (2016). Ayodhyā revisited.

Dorothy Thompson photo
Rose Wilder Lane photo
Genesis P-Orridge photo
Gordon Brown photo

“We not only saved the world, er, saved the banks...”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

" We not only saved the world... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7775515.stm", BBC News, 10 December 2008
Prime Minister

Kendrick Lamar photo
Will Durant photo
Fabien Cousteau photo
Samuel Beckett photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“The art and mystery of banks… is established on the principle that 'private debts are a public blessing.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a give proportion (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for.
ME 13:420
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Dominic Raab photo

“The typical user of a food bank is not someone that's languishing in poverty, it's someone who has a cash flow problem.”

Dominic Raab (1974) British politician (born 1974)

During an election debate hosted by the BBC https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/29/tory-mp-dominic-raab-jeered-over-food-bank-comments (29 May 2017)
2010s, 2017

Marissa Mayer photo

“I've heard both the founding stories of Google and Yahoo, and for both those companies, the founders didn't even have to get into a car. They could literally go to the law office, the venture capitalists, the bank... on a bike. It's all that close together.”

Marissa Mayer (1975) American business executive and engineer, former ceo of Yahoo!

Source: as quoted in: Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom), 9781455559015, Fisher, Adam, 10 July 2018 https://books.google.com/books?id=pwo5DwAAQBAJ&q=marissa#v=snippet&q=marissa&f=false,

Sahle-Work Zewde photo

“In so many areas — agriculture, transport, energy, the water sector, multisector — the support we have been getting for years from the African Development Bank, up to more than one billion dollars, has been very vital for Ethiopia.”

Sahle-Work Zewde (1950) President of Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

Source: Sahle-Work Zewde (2021) cited in: " Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde and African Development Bank chief Akinwumi Adesina discuss Ethiopia’s development priorities https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/press-releases/ethiopian-president-sahle-work-zewde-and-african-development-bank-chief-akinwumi-adesina-discuss-ethiopias-development-priorities-48018" in African Development Bank Group, 16 December 2021.

Linah Mohohlo photo
Ray Dalio photo

“When central banks print a lot of money to relieve a crisis, buy stocks, gold, and commodities because their value will rise and the value of paper money will fall.”

Ray Dalio (1949) American businessman

" Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8" (at 6m43s), Principles by Ray Dalio, 2 March 2022.

John Adams photo

“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

John Adams letter to John Taylor, Of Caroline, Quincy, (12 March, 1819)
1810s, Letter to John Taylor (1819)

Emmanuel Macron photo

“Our country, our nation is built by two institutions, the state and the language. A language whose epicenter today is no longer on these banks of the Seine, but probably much more towards the Congo River basin.”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

Macron lashes out at Zemmour: “Our identity is not built on narrow-mindedness" https://palnws.be/2021/09/macron-haalt-uit-naar-zemmour-onze-identiteit-is-niet-gebouwd-op-bekrompenheid/
2017, 2021