Debt Quotes

“Better to look broke and debt-free than to look good and in deep debt.”
― Abdul Malik Omar, Ka-Ching! Your Money, Your Life: Financial Guide for Young Adults in Brunei

“There is no cholera, no yellow-fever, no small-pox more contagious than debt.”
― Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage

“The deficit, then, is not the difference between what America spends and what America earns; it is, to a striking extent, the difference between what the rich owe and what the rich pay.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Quotable Hitchens from Alcohol to Zionism: The Very Best of Christopher Hitchens

“How do you know me?” I ask.
Now, it’s his turn to look down at the floor. Now, it’s his turn to hesitate.
“You have to tell me or I won’t even entertain this offer,”

“You owe me a debt, Olive,” he says, slowly. “I don’t have to explain anything to you beyond stating the terms of how you can replay it.”
― Charlotte Byrd, Tell Me to Stop

“There is a correlation between how much we care about what others think of us and how much time, energy, and money we waste in a month.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“A man who asks for your time but doesn't value it, will one day ask for your money and won't return it.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Dishonesty is a shadow accompaning those running into debt.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“The number one danger of debt is that it put someone else besides God as master of your life. Just as slavery can dehumanize our dignity, so debt can have a debilitating effect on our spiritual, emotional and relational lives.”
― Gary Rohrmayer

“The one who hugs a debt also shakes hand with a danger.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“The motives of the troika and Greece's domestic oligarchy are obvious. Debt is creditor power, and unsustainable debt gives creditors exorbitant power.”
― Yanis Varoufakis, Adults in the Room: My Battle with Europe's Deep Establishment

“You will become at least as rich as the amount of good debt you take in your life”
― H. J. Chammas

“The academic auspices under which we meet this afternoon, prompt me to introduce my remarks with a literary reference. I recall for you a few lines of Shakespeare, from Hamlet where Polonius bids farewell to his son Laertes:

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."

This was undoubtedly necessary advice from a father to a son about to leave for France. but it is clear that Polonius was neither a banker nor a Californian. If he had been a banker, he might have commented on the merits of good collateral as compared to the possible loss of a few friends. And if he had been a Californian, caught in the vigor of a growth economy, the idea of not being a borrower would never have occurred to him. Therefore, it should not be surprising that a California banker has come to say something on behalf of debt.”
― Rudolph a. Peterson, Debt in a New Environment

“We're caught up in a vicious cycle of debt. We borrow money to build a giant road project. That project attracts new development, which brings more traffic. Eventually the road needs to be expanded; the initial debt has not been paid off, so a new, larger loan is taken out to fund the new project and pay off the old one. The money is borrowed against the promise of further development to bring in new tax revenue. And so it continues.”
― Elly Blue, Bikenomics: How Bicycling Can Save The Economy

“To get into debt with assets can set you up. You’ll sweat from onset till threats upset you. Forget not that those who get it regret it.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“A debt of gratitude should go further than just saying thank you.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“Birth into fortune is no achievement. Achievement comes when those with silver spoons remember that they owe life a debt payable by sharing with those without spoon.”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“Santa gets all the credit and I get all the debt.”
― Nitya Prakash

“Forget about how much the whole world can weigh us down, sometimes just a little debt can make us dance to the tunes of every opportunist around us. So have a healthy fear toward debt, especially ones with interest, and don't make yourself vulnerable to the vultures living among mankind. My stance is... Give your all in every good work your hands can find, and know when to be sharp and when to be selfless as you spend your coin.”
― VKBoy

“Consider one of the most important developments in local government finance in the last 50 years - state constitutional taxation and spending limitations. Starting with Proposition 13 in California, adopted in 1978, many states began to severely limit local governments' ability to tax and spend. In the California case, these limits were arguably spurred by rapid rises in property values as newcomers found their way to California in the 1970s. Again, an institutional reaction appear to *follow* economic growth - California was growing rapidly and existing residents were concerned about the fiscal effects brought about by the influx of immigrants. Colorado's Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), adopted in 1992, also appears to have been in part a reaction to rising tax rates brought about by increasing service demands of increasing populations.”
― Richard Schragger

“Ours is a country where babies are born with crushing debts, where more than half the country are hungry and homeless, where the rays of modernisation never reach those far-flung remote villages, where there is not network of roads in mountain districts, no safe drinking water or a regular supply of already meagre electricity. We sell the electricity at low price and buy back at high price – what madness is this? Those buggers on the high government chairs should die of shame.”
― DB Gurung

“A man with debt soon becomes a man with disturbance.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“A man under debt not only loses the peace but also the people.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“His dead eyes burned with the rage of three months’ worth of late rent.”
― Corey Lamb, I Am Become Apocalypse

“In their forties, our parents' generation could expect to own a house and to have savings. In our forties, we are often still scrambling like we did at twenty-five. According to a 2017 national survey by CareerBuilder, 78 percent of US workers live paycheck-paycheck; nearly three in four say they are in debt.”
― Ada Calhoun, Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

“It is quite simple to earn most people’s respect. All you have to do is convince a bank to loan you money to buy a BMW or the like.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“All too often, a man gets into debt mainly, or even only, to get inside a woman or women.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Mrs MacPherson looked very proud of her son. It made me think about the different lessons people try to pass on to children about money. And about who controls that money.”
― Ovidia Yu, The Betel Nut Tree Mystery

“Some adults usually sleep like a baby, but only literally.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The debt crisis – how much more suffering must humanity endure until we realise we are only at war with numbers?”
― Colin R. Turner, Into The Open Economy: How Everything You Know About The World Is About To Change

“The way I look at debt is that you are taking something which does not belong to you. The person who you took it from expects you to give it back, plus a whole lot more compared to what you received in the first place, whether you like it or not.”
― Anas Hamshari, Businessman With An Affliction