Debt Quotes
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Thou whom avenging pow'rs obey, Cancel my debt (too great to pay) Before the sad accounting day.
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More Debt Quotes
He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.
seneca the younger— Seneca the Younger, On Benefits, Book II, 22, line 1.
Those of us born after that era (of World War II), or with little or no knowledge of those experiences, take freedom for granted. In fact, we give little thought because we are preoccupied with the here and now and yet we owe a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid because you (returned servicemen) paid the price in blood.
ratu joni madraiwiwi— Poppy Drive speech, 21 October 2005
"Now, Halford, I bid you adieu for the present. This is the first instalment of my debt. If the coin suits you, tell me so, and I'll send you the rest of my leisure: if you would rather remain my creditor than stuff your purse with such ungainly heavy pieces — tell me still, and I'll pardon your bad taste, and willingly keep the treasure to myself."
anne brontë— Gilbert Markham (Ch. I : A Discovery)
If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year.
hammurabi— Section 48 of the Code of Hammurabi (translated by Leonard William King, 1910).
— Alternately translated as: If a man owe a debt and Adad inundate his field and carry away the produce, or, though lack of water, grain have not grown in the field, in that year he shall not make any return of grain to the creditor, he shall alter his contract-tablet and he shall not pay the interest for that year.
Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren't so irritating.
bill gates— "Why I Hate Spam" in Microsoft PressPass (2003)
Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.
rutherford b. hayes— Diary (13 July 1879).
[United States Senate Committee on Finance] Staff views it as inappropriate for a hospital to seek payment from a patient by sending a bill, (and) when payment is not received, to seek to recharacterize that debt as charity care. In addition, staff has found that the decision by some hospitals to include bad debt which often consists of very high charges from the (chargemaster list) provides a misleading and inflated accounting of a hospital 's charity care to policymakers and the public.
— United States Senate Committee on Finance staff, cited in: Naples Daily News staff (September 23, 2007). "Nonprofits hope IRS more responsive to them". Naples Daily News (Florida).
'Is there no more?' She cries.'All this to love, and rapture's due, Must we not paya debt to pleasure too?'
Rochester, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of— c.1672 'The Imperfect Enjoyment', l.22-4 (published1680).
Much of the securitization took the form of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) with senior credit tranches certified by rating agencies as AAA. It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that characterized the crisis.
Alan Greenspan— "Epilogue", p. 512
Is there no reconciliation of some ancient quarrel, no payment of some long outstanding debt, no courtesy or love or honor to be rendered to those to whom it has long been due; no charitable, humble, kind, useful deed, by which you can promote the glory of God, or good-will among men, or peace upon earth? If there be any such, I beseech you, in God's name, in Christ's name, go and do it.
arthur penrhyn stanley— Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895, p. 204).
It is better to have a plain, substantial building, with no extravagance about it, but without a debt, than to have the most splendid specimen of Gothic architecture that is overlaid by a mortgage.
william mackergo taylor— P. 151. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.
Alexander Hamilton— Letter to Robert Morris (April 30, 1781)
Reckless people have deluded themselves that this was a subprime crisis. But we have problems with credit-card debt, student-loan debt, auto loans, commercial real estate loans, home-equity loans, corporate debt and loans that financed leveraged buyouts... We have a subprime financial system, not a subprime mortgage market.
nouriel roubini— Quoted in Stephen Mihm, "Dr. Doom," The New York Times (2008-08-15)
He who receives a benefit with gratitude repays the first installment on his debt.
seneca the younger— Seneca the Younger, On Benefits, Book II, 22, line 1.
First in point of time and interest comes the mortgage debt, i.e. the claim for the return of money lent on the security of some tangible object. Such claims are among the earliest fruits of a commercial civilization, and are nearly always affected the same way, viz. by the deposit or pledge of the security with the creditor, to be redeemed or returned on the payment of the debt.
— Chapter IX, The Law Of Personal Property, p. 123
Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt; the United States continues to spend more on its military than do all other nations on earth put together, and military expenditures are not only the basis of the government's industrial policy; they also take up such a huge proportion of the budget that by many estimations, were it not for them, the United States would not run a deficit at all.
David Graeber— Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), p. 365.
If you want to continue being leaders in the world, start by getting some of that [Federal] debt off your backs. Debtors can't be leaders. It's the guy holding the IOUs who can call the shots; the other guy is called a hostage.
— 1992 Quoted in the NewYork Times, 26 May.
There is, of course, a gold mine or a buried treasure on every mortgaged homestead. Whether the farmer ever digs for it or not, it is there, haunting his daydreams when the burden of debt is most unbearable.
fawn brodie— No Man Knows My History, ch. 2 (1945)
"Basically, Herman van Rompuy wants the European Union to become a debt union, which may be acceptable to some of the southern countries who are effectively bust. To the northern countries, it is not."
nigel farage— Segment from an article on the UKIP website, 29 June 2012.
— Welcome to the D€bt Union
So the Bush-Obama administration has taken a fiscal stance diametrically opposed to that of the patron saint of free enterprise. While escalating war in Afghanistan and maintaining over 850 military bases around the world, the administration has run up the national debt that Smith decried. By shifting the tax burden off property and off rent-seeking monopolies – above all, off the financial sector – this policy has raised America’s cost of living and doing business, thereby undercutting its competitive power and running up larger and larger foreign debt.
michael hudson— Adam Smith critiques the Deficit Reduction Commission (December 6, 2010)
The more debt we owe, the wealthier we are.
pete stark— From the interview which he gave to Jan Helfeld . YouTube video
Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
william cobbett— Letter (10 February 1804).
I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
thomas jefferson— Letter to William Plumer (21 July 1816).
Ill husbandry lieth In prison for debt: Good husbandry spieth Where profit to get.
thomas tusser— Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, Chapter LII. Comparing Good Husbandry: Quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), Lemma "Agriculture" p. 18-19.
What is debt anyway? A debt is just the perversion of a promise. It is a promise corrupted by both math and violence."
— David Graeber. Debt: the First 5000 Years (2011).
I, however, place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Plumer, July 21, 1816, reported in ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew A. Lipscomb, vol. 15, p. 47 (1903).
A National debt is a National blessing.
— Attributed to Daniel Webster, repudiated by him. See speech (Jan. 26, 1830).
At some time, here or hereafter, every account must be settled, and every debt paid in full.
— John Heyl Vincent, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 361
debt is the prolific mother of folly and of crime.
benjamin disraeli— Benjamin Disraeli, Henrietta Temple, Book II, Chapter 1 (1837).
