Classical Liberals on Land and Property (Validated)
“Men did not make the earth… It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property… Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.” — Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, 1797
“Both ground rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own…. Ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are, therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.” — Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776
“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. ” — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1785
“Wherever, in any country, there are idle lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.” — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1785
“When the ‘sacredness of property’ is talked about it should always be remembered that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property. No man made the land. It is the general inheritance of the whole species.”
— J.S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848
“They [landlords] grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing.”
— J.S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848
“God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience…. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.”
— John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1690
“The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, exclusive of other beings, from the immediate gift of the Creator.” — William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1766
“It is quite true that the land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies — is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly. It is quite true that unearned increments in land are not the only form of unearned or undeserved profit which individuals are able to secure; but it is the principal form of unearned increment which is derived from processes which are not merely not beneficial, but which are positively detrimental to the general public. Land, which is a necessity of human existence, which is the original source of all wealth, which is strictly limited in extent, which is fixed in geographical position — land, I say, differs from all other forms of property in these primary and fundamental conditions.”
— Winston Churchill, The People’s Land, 1909
Religious Quotes on Land and Property (Validated)
“Moreover the profit of the Earth is for all….” — Ecclesiastes 5:9
“Behold that which I have seen: it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion. Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.”
— Ecclesiastes 5:18-19
“The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is Mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land.” — Leviticus 25:23-24
Religious Quotes on Usury (Validated)
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers.” — Matthew 21:12 (KJV)
“If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.” — Exodus 22:25 (KJV)
“And if thy brother be waxen poor, and his means fail with thee; then thou shalt uphold him: as a stranger and a settler shall he live with thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.” — Leviticus 25:35-37 (KJV)
“He withholds his hand from sin and takes no usury or excessive interest.” — Ezekiel 18:17 (KJV)
“Thou shalt not lend upon usury (interest) to thy brother, interest on the money, or on anything that is lent with interest. Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.” — Deuteronomy 23.19-20 (KJV)
“He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent, he that doeth these things shall never be moved.” — Psalm 15:5 (KJV)
“Those who charge usury are in the same position as those controlled by the devil’s influence. This is because they claim that usury is the same as commerce. However, God permits commerce and prohibits usury. Thus, whoever heeds this commandment from his Lord, and refrains from usury, he may keep his past earnings, and his judgement rests with God. As for those who persist in usury, they incur Hell, wherein they abide forever.” — Koran 2:275
“God condemns usury, and blesses charities. God dislikes every disbeliever, guilty. Lo! Those who believe and do good works and establish worship and pay the poor-due, their reward is with their Lord and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve. O you who believe, you shall observe God and refrain from all kinds of usury, if you are believers. If you do not, then expect a war from God and His messenger. But if you repent, you may keep your capitals, without inflicting injustice, or incurring injustice. If the debtor is unable to pay, wait for a better time. If you give up the loan as a charity, it would be better for you, if you only knew.”
— Koran 2:276-280
“O you who believe, you shall not take usury, compounded over and over. Observe God, that you may succeed.” — Koran 3:130
“And for practicing usury, which was forbidden, and for consuming the people’s money illicitly. We have prepared for the disbelievers among them painful retribution.” — Koran 4:161
“The usury that is practiced to increase some people’s wealth, does not gain anything at God. But if people give to charity, seeking God’s pleasure, these are the ones who receive their reward many fold.” — Koran 30:39
Monetary and Banking Policy (Validated)
“Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John W. Eppes, 1813
“And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Taylor, 1816
“I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to George Logan, 1816
“Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the laws. Usury once in control will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of Democracy is idle and futile.”
— Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King, radio broadcast, 1935, parliament speech, 1934
(Ottawa Citizen, August 3, 1935)
“It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer, and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.”
— Thomas Edison, New York Times, December 6, 1921
“Gold and money are separate things, you see. Gold is the trick mechanism by which you can control money.”
— Thomas Edison, New York Times, December 6, 1921
“The gold standard has, in my opinion, the serious disadvantage that a shortage in the supply of gold automatically leads to a contraction of credit and also of the amount of currency in circulation, to which contraction prices and wages cannot adjust themselves sufficiently quickly.” — Einstein, The World As I See It, 1934
“According to this theory, it is possible to avoid a collapse following a period of credit expansion simply by converting the existing volume of bank credit into actual money having an existence independent of the debt, and at the same time take away the banking system’s privilege of creating any more credit, i.e., force the banks to confine their lending operations to the lending of existing funds.” — Robert de Fremery, Banking and Monetary Reforms To Preserve Private Enterprise, 1956
“Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal — that there is no human relation between master and slave.” — Leo Tolstoy, What to Do?, 1887, English Uncensored Edition
“Connected with this subject is the character of the currency. The idea of making it exclusively metallic, however well intended, appears to me to be fraught with more fatal consequences than any other scheme having no relation to the personal rights of the citizens that has ever been devised. If any single scheme could produce the effect of arresting at once that mutation of condition by which thousands of our most indigent fellow-citizens by their industry and enterprise are raised to the possession of wealth, that is the one. If there is one measure better calculated than another to produce that state of things so much deprecated by all true republicans, by which the rich are daily adding to their hoards and the poor sinking deeper into penury, it is an exclusive metallic currency. Or if there is a process by which the character of the country for generosity and nobleness of feeling may be destroyed by the great increase and neck toleration of usury, it is an exclusive metallic currency.”
— William Henry Harrison, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1841
“If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
— William Jennings Bryan, Democratic National Convention, July 9, 1896
“We say in our platform that we believe that the right to coin money and issue money is a function of government… Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business.”
— William Jennings Bryan, Democratic National Convention, July 9, 1896
“The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few.”
— Henry Ford, My Life and Work, 1922
“Stability of value must not be sought hereafter in convertibility into gold, since gold is very unstable, and this unlimited convertibility into gold only makes it the more unstable. Stability of value must be sought in managing our money, according to a definitely prescribed rule.” — Irving Fisher, 100% Money, 1935
“Providing business with units for measuring its transactions is essentially a function of Government.”
— Irving Fisher, 100% Money, 1935
“Today the important 'mints' are our thousands of checking banks. These should not be permitted to continue unrestricted creation and destruction of money.” — Irving Fisher, 100% Money, 1935
“It would be better for the banks to give up gracefully their usurped function of minting money (in the form of bank notes and checkbook money) and be content to conduct their strictly banking business, unmolested and uninterfered with by booms and depressions—solargely of their own making.” — Irving Fisher, 100% Money, 1935
“Beyond that point, assuming it were ever reached, any further surplus could be used, if desired, for a veritable 'social dividend,' as proposed by certain writers approaching this subject from another angle. That is, in effect, money would be given by the people to the people, to supply the needs of growing business and prevent the fall of the price level which such growth would otherwise cause.”
— Irving Fisher, 100% Money, 1935
Monetary and Banking Policy (* Not Validated Yet)
“That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”
— Mariner S. Eccles, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, September 30, 1941*
“If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash or credit. If the Banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is. It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it becomes widely understood and the defects remedied very soon.”
— Robert H. Hemphill, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, 1936*
“The current monetary system is a cruel hoax. There is virtually no “real” money in the system, only debts. Except for coins, which are issued by the government and make up only about one-thousandth of the money supply, the entire U.S. money supply now consists of debt to private banks, for money they created with accounting entries on their books.”
— Henry C.K. Liu, Professor of Economics, September 16, 2003*
“”I am afraid that the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create and destroy money. And they who control the credit of a nation direct the policy of governments, and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people.”
— Richard McKenna, Midlands Bank of England, speech, 1924*
“When a bank makes a loan it simply adds to the borrowers deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else’s deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It’s new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower.” — Robert Anderson, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, August 31, 1959*
“The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933.” — Milton Friedman*
“If you kill the Fed and don’t kill fractional reserve lending, you’ve done nothing.” — Milton Friedman*
“I have never yet had anyone who could, through the use of logic and reason, justify the Federal Government borrowing the use of its own money….I believe the time will come when people will demand that this be changed. I believe the time will come in this country when they will actually blame you and me and everyone else connected with the Congress for sitting idly by and permitting such an idiotic system to continue.” — Wright Patman, U.S. House Committee for Banking and Currency*
“There never has been devised by any man a plan more specious by which labour could be robbed of the fruits of toil than the banking system. The people not only take bank paper as money, paying interest on it, but when banks suspend, the people lose the discount while the bankers gain it.” — Daniel Webster*
“The people wonder why financial panics occur so frequently. I can tell them why. It is to the interest of the bankers and brokers that they should occur. It is one of the specious methods whereby these despotic and utterly useless knaves rob the producing, manufacturing and mercantile classes of their honest earnings. It is one of the chief means adopted by which this infamous ring is riveting the chains of slavery upon the limbs of labour. It is one of the chief means adopted to build up a money aristocracy that shall live in idle luxury and ape the pretentious manners of European nobility.” — Daniel Webster*
“This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized. The people may not know it immediately, but the day of reckoning is only a few years removed … The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill.” — Charles Lindbergh*
“The warning of Theodore Roosevelt has much timeliness today, for the real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state, and nation … It seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection … To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interest and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. This little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States Government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make cats paws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business … these International Bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and magazines in this country.”
— John Hylan*
“It constitutes a wedge which separates society into two eternally conflicting classes: the idle rich, who live on interest; and the overburdened poor, who must produce it.” — Arthur Kitson*
“It was recognized in Athens and Sparta…centuries before the birth of Christ that one of the most vital prerogatives of the State was the right to issue money.” — Frederick Soddy*
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Monetary and Banking Policy (Misattributed / Disputed)
“The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later, is the people versus the banks.”
— Unknown, often attributed to Lord Acton, 1875
“Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce … And when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.” — Unknown and often misattributed to James Garfield
“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.” — Olive Cushing Dwinell, often misattributed to James Madison
“It was Henry Ford who said, in substance, this, ‘It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.’”
— Rep. Charles Binderup, Congressional Record (House 81:2528), March 19, 1937, often misattributed to Henry Ford
“Give me control of a nation’s money, and I care not who makes the laws.” — Unknown and sourced as “Mayer Amschel Rothschild,” though likely a rewording of the valid quote by Canadian Prime Minister, Mackenzie King.
“If that mischievous financial policy which had its origin in the North American Republic should become indurated down to a fixture, then that government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off its debts and be without a debt. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the history of the civilized governments of the world. The brains and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.”
— Unknown and sourced as “London Times”
“Money is the creature of law and creation of the original issue of money should be maintained as an exclusive monopoly of national government.
“No duty is more imperative on the government than the duty it owes the people of furnishing them with a sound and uniform currency and of regulating the circulation of the medium of exchange so that labour will be protected from a vicious currency, and commerce will be facilitated by cheap and safe exchanges.
“The available supply of gold and silver being wholly inadequate to permit the issuance of coins of intrinsic value or paper currency convertible into coin in the volume required to serve the needs of the people, some other basis for the issue of currency must be developed and some means other than that of convertibility into coin must be developed to prevent undue fluctuations in the value of paper currency or any other substitute for money of intrinsic value that may come into use.
“The monetary needs of increasing numbers of people advancing towards higher standards of living can and should be met by the government. Such needs can be served by the issue of national currency and credit through the operation of a national banking system. The circulation of a medium of exchange issued and backed by the government can be properly regulated, and redundancy of issue avoided by withdrawing from circulation such amounts as may be necessary by taxation, redeposit and otherwise. Government has the power to regulate the currency and credit of the nation.
“Government should stand behind its currency and credit and the bank deposits of the nation. No individual should suffer a loss of money through depreciated or inflated currency or bank bankruptcy.
“Government possessing the power to create and issue currency and credit as money and enjoying the right to withdraw both currency and credit from circulation by taxation and otherwise, need not and should not borrow capital at interest as the means of financing governmental work and public enterprise. The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of government and the buying power of consumers. The privilege of creating and issuing of money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity.
“By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums in interest, discounts and exchanges. The financing of all public enterprise, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress and the conduct of the treasury will become matters of practical administration. The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to Money Power.”
– Gerry McGeer, Conquest of Poverty, 1935 (From the 76th Congress, 1st Session, in the “National Economy and the Banking System” document, 1939: “The above is an abstract of Lincoln’s monetary policy from Mayor McGeer’s Conquest of Poverty….”)
Albert J. Nock (Validated)
“AFTER conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, where by every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State. In its capacity as ultimate landlord, the State distributes the land among its beneficiaries on its own terms. A point to be observed in passing is that by the State-system of land-tenure each original transaction confers two distinct monopolies, entirely different in their nature, in as much as one concerns the right to labour-made property, and the other concerns the right to purely law-made property. The one is a monopoly of the use-value of land; and the other, a monopoly of the economic rent of land. The first gives the right to keep other persons from using the land in question, or trespassing on it, and the right to exclusive possession of values accruing from the application of labour to it; values, that is, which are produced by exercise of the economic means upon the particular property in question. Monopoly of economic rent, on the other hand, gives the exclusive right to values accruing from the desire of other persons to possess that property; values which take their rise irrespective of any exercise of the economic means on the part of the landholder.” — Albert J. Nock, Our Enemy The State, 1935
“This imperfect policy of non-intervention, or laissez-faire, led straight to a most hideous and dreadful economic exploitation; starvation wages, slum dwelling, killing hours, pauperism, coffin-ships, child-labour — nothing like it had ever been seen in modern times…People began to say, if this is what State abstention comes to, let us have some State intervention.
“But the state had intervened; that was the whole trouble. The State had established one monopoly — the landlord’s monopoly of economic rent — thereby shutting off great hordes of people from free access to the only source of human subsistence, and driving them into factories to work for whatever Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bottles chose to give them. The land of England, while by no means nearly all actually occupied, was all legally occupied; and this State-created monopoly enabled landlords to satisfy their needs and desires with little exertion or none, but it also removed the land from competition with industry in the labor market, thus creating a huge, constant and exigent labour-surplus.” — Albert J. Nock, The Gods’ Lookout, 1934
Praising Henry George (Validated)
“I thank you for your great friendliness. I have already read Henry George’s great book and really learnt a great deal from it. Yesterday evening I read with admiration the address about Moses. Men like Henry George are rare unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form and fervent love of justice. Every line is written as if for our generation. The spreading of these works is a really deserving cause, for our generation especially has many and important things to learn from Henry George.” — Albert Einstein, Letter to Anna George De Mille, 1934
“In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.” — Milton Friedman, The Times Herald, Pennsylvania, 1978
“People do not argue with the teaching of George; they simply do not know it. And it is impossible to do otherwise with his teaching, for he who becomes acquainted with it cannot but agree.” — Leo Tolstoy, A Great Iniquity, Letter to the London Times, 1905
Henry George (Validated)
“For as labor cannot produce without the use of land, the denial of the equal right to use of land is necessarily the denial of the right of labor to its own produce.” — Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879
“The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.”
— Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879
“How can a man be said to have a country where he has no right to a square inch of soil….” — Henry George, Social Problems, 1883
“Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.”
— Henry George, How to Help the Unemployed, The North American Review, 1894
“For at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.” — Henry George, Social Problems, 1883
“The truth that I have tried to make clear will not find easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been accepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have been obscured. But it will find friends—those who will toil for it; suffer for it; if need be, die for it. This is the power of Truth.” — Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879
“There are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of any better state of society than that which now exists.”
— Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 1879
Random Funny Henry George Quotes (Validated)
“To such a demand [for payment of taxes on national debt] any one of us would reply in effect, ‘My great-grandfather was evidently a knave or a joker, and your great-grandfather was certainly a fool, which quality you surely have inherited if you expect me to pay you money because my great-grandfather promised that I should do so. He might as well have given your great-grandfather a draft upon Adam or a check upon the First National Bank of the Moon.’” — Henry George, Social Problems, 1883
“We are digging silver out of certain holes in the ground in Nevada and Colorado and poking it down other holes in the ground in Washington, New York and San Francisco. We are spending great sums in useless ‘public improvements,’ and are paving pensions under a law which seems framed but to put a premium upon fraud and get away with public money.” — Henry George, Social Problems, 1883
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