Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Jefferson, Adam Smith, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, Henry Kissinger on Debt, Inflation and Revolution

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency,
the second is war.

Ernest Hemingway

We should consider ourselves unauthorized
to saddle posterity with our debts and morally bound to pay them ourselves

Each generation has the right by will of its majority to bind themselves
but none to bind the succeeding generation

Thomas Jefferson

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree,
[there has never been] a single instance
of their having been fairly and completely paid.

The liberation of the public revenue...
has always been brought about by bankruptcy,
though frequently by a pretended payment [through inflation].

Adam Smith
Moral philosopher and Father of Modern Economics

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This country, with its institutions belongs to the people who inhabit it.

Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government,
they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it,
or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

Abraham Lincoln

When the rich plunder the poor of his rights,
it becomes an example for the poor to plunder the rich of his property,
for the rights of the one are as much property to him
as wealth is property to the other,
and the little all is as dear as the much.

It is only by setting out on just principles
that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found,
that when the rich protect the rights of the poor,
the poor will protect the property of the rich.

But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal.

Thomas Paine

Any system produces winners and losers.

If the gap between them gets too great,
the losers will organize themselves politically
and seek to recast the existing system within nations and between them.

Henry Kissinger