As much as I love this quote, I haven't been able to find any primary sources for it. It's allegedly from a letter he wrote in 1802, but I can't find the letter anywhere. Would love to have that reference in my back pocket if anyone has it readily available.
Closest I could get was from Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (Suzy Platt, 1993), pg. 229, which checked the attribution. She stated Jefferson couldn’t have said it because these words weren’t in use during his era:
“Inflation was listed in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1864, but the OED gives 1920 as the earliest use of the word “deflation”.”
From there I double checked 19th and early 20th century Google books, and it looks like what she wrote is correct.
But if not Jefferson, then who? The question still stands.
As much as I love this quote, I haven't been able to find any primary sources for it. It's allegedly from a letter he wrote in 1802, but I can't find the letter anywhere. Would love to have that reference in my back pocket if anyone has it readily available.
Closest I could get was from Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (Suzy Platt, 1993), pg. 229, which checked the attribution. She stated Jefferson couldn’t have said it because these words weren’t in use during his era:
“Inflation was listed in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1864, but the OED gives 1920 as the earliest use of the word “deflation”.”
From there I double checked 19th and early 20th century Google books, and it looks like what she wrote is correct.
But if not Jefferson, then who? The question still stands.