Debt Quotes

A man in debt is so far a slave.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.
Ambrose Bierce

Debt is the slavery of the free.
Publilius Syrus

Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt.
Benjamin Franklin

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan doth oft lose both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
William Shakespeare
Hamlet.

Debts are nowadays like children begot with pleasure, but brought forth in pain.
Moliere

Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.
Henry Wheeler Shaw

I'm in debt. I am a true American.
Balki Bartokomous
From American TV show Perfect Strangers.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best-
God! but the interest!
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The Debt.

Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people.
Wendell Phillips

If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.
John Maynard Keynes

Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is possible to pay another man's debts on his behalf, but it is not possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place.
Carl Lofmark

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.
Samuel Johnson
The Great Cham of Literature.

Debt is the worst poverty.
Thomas Fuller

I must say, I never expected to see the day where I would be talking about anything other than reducing the debt, I'm running into the tyranny of zero, which is where you can't reduce (the debt) any more.
Alan Greenspan

Avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen which we ourselves ought to bear.
George Washington

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Winston Churchill

Debts and lies are generally mixed together.
Francois Rabelais

He that dies pays all debts.
William Shakespeare

Death's the discharge of our debt of sorrow.
Seneca

Debt is a prolific mother of folly and of crime.
Benjamin Disraeli

Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.
Ogden Nash

Who goes a-borrowing goeth a-sorrowing.
Thomas Tusser

A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.
Oscar Wilde

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
Earl Wilson

His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Village Blacksmith.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.
Benjamin Franklin

It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralize the long-range effects of our national stupidity.
Frank Zappa

It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much.
Cicero

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.
Alexander Hamilton

Be assured that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in debt, than to do without any article whatever which we may seem to want.
Thomas Jefferson
In letter to his daughter.

Live within your means, never be in debt, and by husbanding your money you can always lay it out well. But when you get in debt you become a slave. Therefore I say to you never involve yourself in debt, and become no man's surety. If your friend is in distress, aid him if you have the means to spare. If he fails to be able to return it, it is only so much lost.
Andrew Jackson

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

A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest field.
Robert Green Ingersoll

Many delight more in giving of presents than in paying their debts.
Sir Philip Sidney

A true lover always feels in debt to the one he loves.
Ralph W. Sockman

A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy.
Publilius Syrus

You load 16 tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company store.
Merle Travis
From song Sixteen Tons.