Carl Andre Quotes

Money is not something you just print. It must be backed by something, either good economy or gold.

Gold is money. Everything else is credit.

Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous.

Without the parallel development of systems of monetary - and credit-based exchange - there could have been no development of economies beyond the most primitive organizational forms and the most geographically restricted sales.

Practically and commercially speaking, a dollar is not necessarily a specific thing, made of silver, or gold, or any other single metal, or substance. It is only such a quantum of market value as exists in a given piece of silver or gold.

Civilized countries generally adopt gold or silver or both as money.

All money is a matter of belief.

A currency serves three functions: providing a means of payment, a unit of account and a store of value. Gold may be a store of value for wealth, but it is not a means of payment. You cannot pay for your groceries with it. Nor is it a unit of account. Prices of goods and services, and of financial assets, are not denominated in gold terms.

The several forms of our paper money offer, in my judgment, a constant embarrassment to the Government.

... a baseless currency varying every fifty miles and fluctuating everywhere.

The institution of a bank has also a natural relation to the regulation of trade between the States, in so far as it is conducive to the creation of a convenient medium of exchange between them, and to the keeping up a full circulation, by preventing the frequent displacement of the metals in reciprocal remittances Money is the very hinge on which commerce turns. And this does not merely mean gold and silver; many other things have served the purpose, with different degrees of utility. Paper has been extensively employed.

The Practice of most Trading Nations confirms, that Paper is more Qualified for the Use of Money, than Silver; providing it have a Value

Neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities, intrinsically, a 'dollar' bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries.

It is said that our paper [money] is as good as silver, because we may have silver for it at the bank where it issues. This is not true. One, two, or three persons might have it; but a general application would soon exhaust their vaults, and leave a ruinous proportion of their paper in its intrinsic worthless form.

Tangible currency (coins and dollar bills) together make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. money supply. The other 97 percent exists only as data entries on computer screens, and all of this money was created by banks in the form of loans.

The dollar used to be a gold standard currency. And the dollar is really good in the last century, I mean in the 19th century.

You could see how money is different all of a sudden in Italy when they had the lire and now they have the euro. So they, in a revolutionary way, have gone from bad money to good money comparatively. But what about the rest of the world?

Money is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. It is so much warmth, so much bread.

People that's in power - the central banks, these fiat currencies that are traded globally - they got influence over the messaging and the narrative in the media.

I don't think central banks are going to give up fiat currency anytime in my lifetime.

Dollar bills have absolutely no value except in our collective imagination, but everybody believes in the dollar bill.

In the North, neither greenbacks, taxes, nor war bonds were enough to finance the war. So a national banking system was created to convert government bonds into fiat money, and the people lost over half of their monetary assets to the hidden tax of inflation. In the South, printing presses accomplished the same effect, and the monetary loss was total.

Governments have persistently tried their best to promote, encourage, and expand the circulation of bank and government paper, and to discourage the people's use of gold itself.

No gold-digging for me; I take diamonds! We may be off the gold standard someday.

Money is only important in a society when certain resources for survival must be rationed and the people accept money as an exchange medium for the scarce resources. Money is a social convention, an agreement if you will. It is neither a natural resource nor does it represent one. It is not necessary for survival unless we have been conditioned to accept it as such.