Consequential Quotes: Warnings from US Presidents #2

What better day to release the next entry in Consequential Quotes: Warnings from US Presidents than Presidents’ Day?

I’m working my way through my collected presidential warnings chronologically, so the previous entry included George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

I decided to create uniform quote cards (1600x900px) so they will work better for sharing on social media. I also made more truncated versions featuring the most salient lines and included those after the longer quotes, so if you feel like you’re experiencing déja-vù, that’s why.

Lastly, I link to the sources so you have the original context. I always try to find the primary sources to corroborate the quotes when possible because there are so many fake ones populating the Internet.

These two quotes, for example, I had to omit because they appear to be inauthentic, as appealing as they are for their prescience:

“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarch, more insolent than autocracy and more selfish than a bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy.… I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war.”
—Abraham Lincoln [source; believed to be from a forgery]

“Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and commerce. 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.”
―James A. Garfield [source; believed to be misattributed]

For the same reason, I had to remove the following Abraham Lincoln quote because it came from the same letter judged to be a forgery, even though I’d already made spiffy quote cards for the full quote and a truncated version. They’re so darn perfect for our circumstances, the forger gets credit for perspicacious clairvoyance.

“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood.… It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”
—Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Colonel William F. Elkins, November 21, 1864 [believed to be from a forgery]

“As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
—Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Colonel William F. Elkins, November 21, 1864 [believed to be from a forgery]

As always, I issue my standard disclaimer that just because I quote someone doesn’t mean I agree with them or think they’re an admirable human being. Woodrow Wilson, for example, is vile and sold the nation out to the bankers when he allowed them to institute the Federal Reserve, and yet the quotes I’ve included by him hint at the forces that connived to erect that heinous institution.

In the essential The Creature from Jekyll Island, G. Edward Griffin speculates that Teddy Roosevelt was persuaded to launch a third party—the Progressive Party (a.k.a., the Bull Moose Party)—with the intention of splitting the 1912 vote so Democratic candidate and international bankers’ puppet Wilson would win against William Howard Taft’s bid for reelection:

“[Teddy] was persuaded by Morgan’s deputies, George Perkins and Frank Munsey, to challenge the President for the Party’s nomination. When that effort failed, he was then persuaded to run against Taft as the ‘Bull Moose’ candidate on the Progressive Party ticket. It is unclear what motivated him to accept such a proposition, but there is no doubt regarding the intent of his backers. They did not expect Roosevelt to win, but, as a former Republican President, they knew he would split the Party and, by pulling away votes from Taft, put Wilson into the White House.”

Whether or not Teddy was in on the fix, the quote I included from his 1912 campaign speech Progressive Covenant with the People is a searing indictment of the Uniparty and an exposé of the corrupt interests controlling both wings that still holds true today:

“Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great staffs, both of the old parties have ganged aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them in martialing to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”
—Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive Covenant with the People, 1912

As I shared in a Substack Note last year, you can even hear an audio recording of Teddy delivering the speech, which I thought was pretty dang historic.

Mostly, what you learn from these quotes is conspiracy analysts have been right all along about a shadow government of financial interests string-pulling our ostensible leaders, and presidents have been trying to warn us about it for centuries.

Note: Like with my Memes by Themes, I’ve included a free sampler for my full mailing list. Paid subscribers enjoy access to all the quote cards, text versions of the quotes (both full and truncated), and a scan of the Lincoln letter (this one’s legit) so you can see the words in his own handwriting.

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