“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
—Smedley Butler
“If only more of today’s military personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elites as a publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad.”
—Smedley Butler
“It was not my intention to doubt that the Doctrines of the Illuminati and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am. The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of separation). That Individuals of them may… actually had a separation [sic] of the People from their Government in view, is too evident to be questioned.”
—George Washington, 1st President of the United States (1789–1797), from a letter that Washington wrote on October 24, 1798, which can be found in the Library of Congress. For an analysis of Washington’s warning, see the article “Library of Congress: George Washington Warns of Illuminati”
“I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”
—Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States (1801–1809) and principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence (1776), in a letter written to John Taylor on May 28, 1816
“A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.”
—John C. Calhoun, Vice President (1825-1832) and U.S. Senator, from a speech given on May 27, 1836