Debt Quotes
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.
"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.
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).
Thou whom avenging pow'rs obey, Cancel my debt (too great to pay) Before the sad accounting day.
Wentworth Dillon— Wentworth Dillon, On the Day of Judgment, Stanza 11
'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))
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)
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.
It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.
Saul Bellow— "Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 68
People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. They always say that that everyone should vote but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be a real democratic revolution.
tony benn— Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007)
Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.
ralph waldo emerson— Fragment
We must stop spending money that we just don’t have. Historic debt leads to historic tax increases, which stifle job growth.”
kristi noem— Lawrence, Tom. S.D. Rep. Noem pushes for big cuts in federal spending, The Daily Republic, March 11, 2011.
Death's a debt; his mandamus binds all alike — no bail, no demurrer.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan— St. Patrick's Day (1775), Act II, sc. iv.
She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.
david brin— Chapter 73 (p. 480)
There is no debt with so much prejudice put off as that of justice.
Plutarch— Of those whom God is slow to punish.
Lyin' awake in a cold, cold sweat Am I overdrawn, am I going in debt? It gets worse, the older that you get No escape from the state of confusion I'm in State of confusion I'm in
— Ray Davies, in "State of Confusion" on State of Confusion (1983) by The Kinks
As in the beginning, so now, and it will be for ever after, we come of a race who are very bad managers in youth, though we improve as we get older. I have cut down the cost of my falconers to 1200 florins, and I hope soon to be out of debt.
— William writing to his brother Louis, as quoted in William the Silent (1902) by Frederic Harrison, p. 10
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
— Herbert Hoover, Address to the Nebraska Republican Conference, Lincoln, Nebraska (16 January 1936)
The kiss you take is paid by that you give. The joy is mutual, and I'm still in debt.
— George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne), Heroic Love, Act V, scene 1.
Drinking water neither makes a man sick, nor in debt, nor his wife a widow.
— John Neal, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 576.
I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude and I believe most Iraqis express that.
— George W. Bush, January 13, 2007 [34]
