History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
Thomas JeffersonAll the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture where it would have produced addition to the common mass It nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of industry and morality It has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature as turns the balance between the honest voters whichever way it is directed.
Thomas JeffersonIt is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Thomas Jefferson