Debt Quotes

Do not make people feel overly indebted to you. In their quest to restore the illusive balance and wipe out the debt, they will demonize and attribute wrongdoings to you. Instead, give with love and receive with gratitude.

~ Charbel Tadros

The world economy would collapse if a significant number of people were to realize and then act on the realization that it is possible to enjoy many if not most of the things that they enjoy without first having to own them.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Debt is great source of inner unhappiness.

~ Debasish Mridha

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

~ Robert W. Service

I don't want to spend the rest of my life paying off loans when I don't even like school to begin with.

~ Robin Talley

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

~ Charles Dickens

Always remember this, Henri. Men trade for profit. They are driven by greed. But debt is about fear, and fear is stronger than greed. The true power, the weapon that defeats all others, is debt. Fools search for gold. The wise man studies debt. That is the key to all business.

~ Edward Rutherfurd

Jimmy put in a word and told them that if I made it, I wouldn't be able to live with myself without paying them back. That I'd sooner die than owe anyone money for helping me. Apparently Jimmy knew more about me at that point than I knew about myself.

~ Craig Ferguson

The bank wanted me to sell those customers that debt, because the system needs you to buy that new car, that holiday to Barbados, that latest iPhone or that new extension you’ve always been dreaming off. The banks are happy to let you do it with their high interest credit products, and they want me to be the guy that sells the idea to you. I was serving the machine that was enslaving me.

~ K.a. Hill

...freedom is of more account than the height of a roof beam. I ought to know; mine cost me eighteen years' slavery. The man who lives on his own land is an independent man. He is his own master. If I can keep my sheep alive through winter and can pay what has been stipulated from year to year - then I pay what has been stipulated; and I have kept my sheep alive. No, it is freedom that we are all after, Titla. He who pays his way is a king. He who keeps his sheep alive through the winter lives in a palace.

~ Halldór Laxness

It used to be that rebels were the type who wore leather jackets, rode motorcycles, smoked cigarettes and drank cheap domestic beer. Today’s rebels are people who look at their world critically and observe the ensnaring patterns of the consumeristic lifestyle. (Life Hacks, p.50

~ Jon Morrison

I will feel no guilt on shutting my door to those who didn't listen.

~ Stefan Molyneux

Most women sell sex, most of them just don’t take cash (nor do they each sell to more than one ‘client’ at a time).

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Some people will each start investing more of their salary on ‘their’ house and spending less of it on ‘their’ car or cars only when they start being able to take ‘their’ house to work, funerals, weddings, etc.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I sincerely believe 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.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Our country is failing to live up to its promise of opportunity and fairness. It used to be true that if you went to college and you worked hard, you could count on having a decent middle-class life - but that's just not true anymore. Economic and political changes that have occurred over the past three decades have made the middle-class American dream for today's twenty- and thirtysomethings far less possible than it was for their parents' generation. It's not that we're lazy, that we have no work ethic, or that we have outrageous spending habits. It's that we've been screwed.

~ Camille Perri

Those who spend all they earn always end in penury.

~ Bamigboye Olurotimi

Money is sacred as everyone knows... So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty.

~ Barry Unsworth

‎We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Unless, of course, one chose to join the increasing numbers who had decided they were so deep in despair that there was nothing worse to fear in life. These were men who had finally, and so early, so surprisingly early seen enough of something in their own ives and in the lives around them to convince them of the final futility of efforts of efforts to break the mean monthly cycle of debt and borrowing, borrowing and debt.

~ Ayi Kwei Armah

Nature is an expert in cost-benefit analysis,' she says. 'Although she does her accounting a little differently. As for debts, she always collects in the long run...

~ Margaret Atwood

As Charles Darwin said,'The economy shown by Nature in her resources is striking,'' says the Spirit. 'All wealth comes from Nature. Without it, there wouldn't be any economics. The primary wealth is food, not money. Therefore anything that concerns the handling of the land also concerns me.

~ Margaret Atwood

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

In many cases, it was the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that fell for her man.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

In some cases, it is the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that has left her man for another.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

[Credit is a system whereby] a person who can't pay, gets another person who can't pay, to guarantee that he can pay.

~ Charles Dickens

The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.

~ P.g. Wodehouse

In fact this is precisely the logic on which the Bank of England—the first successful modern central bank—was originally founded. In 1694, a consortium of English bankers made a loan of £1,200,000 to the king. In return they received a royal monopoly on the issuance of banknotes. What this meant in practice was they had the right to advance IOUs for a portion of the money the king now owed them to any inhabitant of the kingdom willing to borrow from them, or willing to deposit their own money in the bank—in effect, to circulate or monetize the newly created royal debt. This was a great deal for the bankers (they got to charge the king 8 percent annual interest for the original loan and simultaneously charge interest on the same money to the clients who borrowed it) , but it only worked as long as the original loan remained outstanding. To this day, this loan has never been paid back. It cannot be. If it ever were, the entire monetary system of Great Britain would cease to exist.

~ David Graeber

Every time you borrow money, you're robbing your future self.

~ Nathan W. Morris

...If you look at mainstream economics there are three things you will not find in a mainstream economic model - Banks, Debt, and Money. How anybody can think they can analyze capital while leaving out Banks, Debt, and Money is a bit to me like an ornithologist trying to work out how a bird flies whilst ignoring that the bird has wings...

~ Steve Keen

And don't tell me debt is not a big deal. Debt will cut off your legs and laugh at you as you grovel in the dirt begging for mercy. If you don't need it, don't get it. If you can't afford it, don't get it. If you're already in debt, get out quickly. If you think you'll never get out, you're right, you won't.

~ Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

A Debt Problem Is, At Its Core, a Budgeting Problem.

~ Natalie Pace

It’s time to ask why [the United States] is the only country in the world where we permit our children to be saddled with tens — sometimes hundreds — of thousands of dollars of debt before they begin to earn a penny.

~ F.h. Buckley

Here is an equation worth remembering: Five dollars earned minus seven dollars spent = Unhappy Life. (Life Hacks, p.51)

~ Jon Morrison

It's not about judging you, it's about changing your point of view.

~ Simone Milasas

When you are willing to be everything that you are, you become an infinitely creative source for everything in your life - including money.

~ Simone Milasas

Do you have to regret spending money when you earn money? And when it is time to spend, you should be strong that you got the opportunity to pay off your debt. Income is one’s responsibility and expense is the means to clear off the responsibility.

~ Dada Bhagwan

The most empowering thing you can do though is to create innovative ways to bring in livable wages. That begins with a debt free lifestyle.

~ Brandi L. Bates

I looked into her eyes, and saw my own staring back, the same peculiar shade, pale grey, flecked with yellow, rimmed with black. Now I knew the nature of her debt. It had weighed on her conscience for fourteen years. I was looking into the eyes of mother and I knew that I would never see her again.

~ Celia Rees

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

~ Lois Mcmaster Bujold