Who really said it

I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies

Q: Did Thomas Jefferson say "I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies"?

No. The sentiment is genuinely Jefferson's, from his letter to John Taylor of 28 May 1816 — but he wrote "banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies," not "banking institutions … more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies." The popular wording swaps a word and inserts "to our liberties," and it is often padded out with a wholly fabricated passage about private banks, "inflation" and "deflation."

Thomas Jefferson — but a slight misquotation of his real words Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826 · 3rd U.S. President & Founding Father

Disputed Free to reuse

The sentiment is genuinely Jefferson’s, from his letter to John Taylor of 28 May 1816 — but he wrote “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies,” not “banking institutions … more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” The popular wording swaps a word and inserts “to our liberties,” and it is often padded out with a wholly fabricated passage about private banks, “inflation” and “deflation.”

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed — copy with the correction

“I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies” Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 28 May 1816 (genuine wording: "banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies")

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Provenance

The real source

Source: Letter to John Taylor
Date: 28 May 1816
Genuine wording: “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies”
Status: Slight misquotation of a genuine line

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Jefferson’s actual sentence in the 1816 letter to John Taylor. The popular quote replaces “establishments” with “institutions,” drops “with you,” and inserts “to our liberties.”

Jefferson’s full 28 May 1816 letter to John Taylor

How we traced it

The genuine line appears in Jefferson’s 28 May 1816 letter to John Taylor, transcribed by the National Archives.
The full letter text confirms he wrote “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies” — not “institutions” or “to our liberties.”
Monticello’s Jefferson scholars label the popular wording a misquotation and the longer “inflation/deflation” expansion spurious.

Public domain

The genuine sentence comes from Jefferson’s 28 May 1816 letter to John Taylor, published long ago and firmly in the public domain (Jefferson died in 1826). The popular misquotation is only a two-word alteration of that public-domain text and creates no new rights; the padded “inflation/deflation” expansion has no identifiable authored source.

Fact-check

What’s really going on

This one is unusual: the attribution to Jefferson is essentially correct, but the exact wording that circulates is a slight misquotation — and it is frequently bolted onto a passage Jefferson never wrote at all.

Thomas Jefferson (as popularly quoted) Misquotation

Jefferson’s real sentence reads “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies” — not “banking institutions … more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” The word “institutions” and the phrase “to our liberties” were introduced later, per Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson (falsely) Fabrication

The extended chain-email version — “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation…” — appears nowhere in Jefferson’s writings; the terms “inflation” and “deflation” were not used in this economic sense until after his death, and the passage is documented as spurious by Monticello.

Jefferson genuinely wrote that “banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies” in his 28 May 1816 letter to John Taylor — the popular wording is a slight paraphrase, and the “private banks / inflation / deflation” expansion is a later fabrication.

Context

Why it mattered

Jefferson wrote to the Virginia statesman John Taylor of Caroline in 1816, responding to Taylor’s book attacking the banking and funding systems. Jefferson agreed emphatically, calling banking a “blot” on the constitutions and denouncing public debt passed to future generations as “swindling futurity on a large scale.”

His comparison of banks to standing armies — the era’s classic symbol of a threat to republican liberty — is why the line resonates today, and why it is so often pressed into service in modern debates over central banking and the Federal Reserve, usually in its altered form.

“Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Freedom Power

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Founders Online: Jefferson to John Taylor, 28 May 1816founders.archives.gov

National Archives transcription of the primary letter containing the genuine line.

Private Banks (Spurious Quotation)monticello.org

Monticello’s Jefferson scholars on the misquotation and the fabricated expanded version.

Jefferson to John Taylor (1816)oll.libertyfund.org

Online Library of Liberty reproduction of the passage with context.

Jefferson banking quote fact-checktruthorfiction.com

Fact-check confirming the genuine statement and noting the wording variations.

Full letter (Letters of Thomas Jefferson)let.rug.nl

Complete text of the 28 May 1816 letter to John Taylor.

The true author

About Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

1743–1826 · 3rd U.S. President & Founding Father

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States. A lifelong opponent of concentrated financial power, he corresponded extensively on banking, public debt, and the dangers he believed a national banking system posed to a republic of independent citizens.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 28 May 1816, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 10 (Princeton: Princeton University Press); transcription at Founders Online, National Archives.

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