Thomas Jefferson on U.S. Currency & the Federal Reserve

If the American people ever allow the 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 property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied. The issuing power of money should be taken from the banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it belongs.

~ Quoted in Olive Cushing Dwinell, The Story of Our Money