Quotes & Sayings About Debtors

Albert B. Saye, who has searched hardest for debtors among the colonists, estimates that not more than a dozen debtors released from prison by Parliament ever came to Georgia, if indeed that many came. — Kenneth Coleman

Let us not expect too much from our own hearts here below. At our best we shall find in ourselves daily cause for humiliation, and discover that we are needy debtors to mercy and grace every hour. — J.C. Ryle

relationships between debtors and creditors brokered or 'intermediated' by increasingly numerous institutions called banks. The core function of these institutions was now information gathering and risk management. — Niall Ferguson

A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama Canal; the conditions under which they have lived and have done their work have been better than in any similar work ever undertaken in the tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their work; and they have made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they have accomplished. — Theodore Roosevelt

Every novel is a debtor to Homer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Moreover, an archetype exists in the nation's consciousness that connects student loan debt with irresponsibility. This is a result of well-publicized accounts of loan defaults in decades past in which students took out loans with no intention of ever paying them back and simply filed for bankruptcy after graduation. This perception was sufficiently strong that in the 1970s, Congress was convinced to remove bankruptcy protections from student loans. However, according to a March 2007 paper by John A. E. Pottow of the University of Michigan, this perception had a fatal flaw: "The fatal problem is that there are no empirical data to buttress the myth that students defraud creditors any more than other debtors."1 In fact, it was shown that when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, there was a less than 1 percent bankruptcy rate among student debtors.2 Nevertheless, this misconception has been so often repeated that it is now indelibly etched in the public's mind. — Alan Collinge

This figure shows the cash flows in a world with only two people. I labeled them creditor and debtor. In reality, there are many creditors and debtors (see text for details). It also explains why the "rich get richer" and why those who are in debt and work for a living never seem to "get ahead. — Jacob Lund Fisker

Arguments about debt have been going on for at least five thousand years. For most of human history - at least, the history of states and empires - most human beings have been told that they are debtors.4 Historians, and particularly historians of ideas, have been oddly reluctant to consider the human consequences, especially since this situation - more than any other - has caused continual outrage and resentment. Tell people they are inferior, they are unlikely to be pleased, but this surprisingly rarely leads to armed revolt. Tell people that they are potential equals who have failed and that therefore, even what they do have they do not deserve, that it isn't rightly theirs, and you are much more likely to inspire rage. Certainly — David Graeber

Bankruptcy is about financial death and financial rebirth. Bankruptcy is the great American story rewritten. We're a nation of debtors. — Elizabeth Warren

Let him who desires to be harsh in making demands upon his debtors consider that he is God's debtor. — Saint Augustine

OWE, v. To have (and to hold) a debt. The word formerly signified not indebtedness, but possession; it meant "own," and in the minds of debtors there is still a good deal of confusion between assets and liabilities. — Ambrose Bierce

The borrower is slave to the lender and the debtor to the creditor. — Benjamin Franklin

Not everyone is a debtor who wishes to be; not everyone who wishes makes creditors. — Francois Rabelais

[T]he most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. — James Madison

Life owes me a living worth living. Yes, Eden regarded life as her debtor, she its relentless paymaster. — Fannie Hurst

Pile up gold, heap up silver, build covered walks, fill your house with slaves and the town with debtors, unless you lay to rest the passions of the soul, and put a curb on your insatiable desires, and rid yourself of fear and anxiety, you are but pouring out wine for a man in a fever, and giving honey to a man who is bilious, and laying out a sumptuous banquet for people who are suffering from dysentery, — Plutarch

Lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; — David Mitchell

G Our Father in heaven, h hallowed be i your name. [1] 10 j Your kingdom come, k your will be done, [2] l on earth as it is in heaven. 11 m Give us n this day our daily bread, [3] 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And o lead us not into temptation, — Anonymous

an economic operating system designed by thirteenth-century Moorish accountants looking for a way to preserve the aristocracy of Europe has worked as promised. It turned the marketplace into one giant debtors' prison. It is not only unfit for the needs of a twenty-first-century digital society; central currency is the core mechanism of the growth trap. — Douglas Rushkoff

We have discharged one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We find only that we forget, when times are good, that times were ever bad. — Jill Lepore

Ah, fortune and fame shall follow me ... and I shall dwell in the world of the chosen for a few moments of fleeting ecstasy; ere the seven burly lads turn into creditors and hustle me off to debtors' prison at last. — Hunter S. Thompson

The aim of New Deals is to exterminate the class of creditors and thrust all men into that of debtors. It is like trying to breedcattle with all cows and no bulls. — H.L. Mencken

The American taxpayer should not be treated more shabbily than debtors from other nations and we should be encouraging other nations to help rebuild Iraq's economy. — Hillary Clinton

When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We have decided to lock people up for social deviancy these days. We tell ourselves that we're not running debtors' prisons, that this isn't Dickensian — Linda Tirado

Yajna having come to us with our birth, we are debtors all our lives, and thus for ever bound to serve the universe. — Mahatma Gandhi

These businessmen, however, desired more than the simple elimination of imprisonment for defaulting debtors. They wanted a bankruptcy law that would abolish the debt itself, as well as imprisonment. With such a law, old misjudgments would not plague their future; indeed, it might unleash creative, if risky, enterprise.[63] — Robert J. Rayback

Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow. — David Hume

The Bible says forgive your debtors; the world says "sue them for their dough." — Billy Sunday

Savers have to be punished so debtors can be saved.

Why? Because if debtors are rescued, that makes it possible for more debts to be issued in the future.

And why is that important? Because the banking system needs ever more loans in order to survive. — Chris Martenson

Substantive and procedural law benefits and protects landlords over tenants, creditors over debtors, lenders over borrowers, and the poor are seldom among the favored parties. — John Turner

As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors; nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too. — Samuel Johnson

Until 1869, when they were banned, debtors' prisons were the great incinerators of British reputations. Those who were unable to pay their bills were jailed until their creditors were paid - an unlikely event, given that the prisoner was unable to work. — Tina Brown

Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest. — Honore De Balzac

There is but one true Giver in the universe; all else are debtors. — Philip Yancey

Debtors and idlers abounded in the colonial era, but failing in business was not so calamitous as falling from grace... In Early America, fear of failure loomed largest on Sunday. Monday morning dawned about the year 1800. By then, 'failure' meant an entrepreneurial failure. — Scott A. Sandage

No 22-year-old should have to enter the real world already in a virtual debtors' prison. — Michael Moore

I choose faithfulness ... Today I will keep my promises. My debtors will not regret their trust. My associates will not question my word. My wife will not question my love. And my children will never fear that they father will not come home. — Max Lucado

As many as two out of every three Europeans who came to the colonies were debtors on arrival: they paid for their passage by becoming indentured servants. — Jill Lepore

I made one mistake. Who doesn't? But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. Of course it left me deformed and unserviceable, defective and dangerous to associate with. ... But what in God's name has happened to charity? ... Self-interest guides me like the next man but not invariably; not all the time. I use compassion more than you do; I have loyalties and I keep by them; I serve honesty in a crooked way, but as best I can; and I don't plague my debtors or even make them aware of their debt. ... Why is it so impossible to trust me? — Dorothy Dunnett

While everyone else must pay their debts or go bankrupt, the banks are permitted to refuse redemption of their receipts, at the same time forcing their own debtors to pay when their loans fall due. The usual name for this is a "suspension of specie payments." A more accurate name would be "license for theft;" for what else can we call a governmental permission to continue in business without fulfilling one's contract? — Murray N. Rothbard

A short squeeze could happen with the U.S. dollar if lenders suddenly forced debtors to pay in cash. — Robert Kiyosaki

These multiplying societies treated the sick, aided the industrious poor, housed orphans, fed imprisoned debtors, built huts for shipwrecked sailors, and, in the case of the Massachusetts Humane Society, even attempted to resuscitate those suffering from "suspended animation," that is, those such as drowning victims who appeared to be dead but actually were not. The fear of being buried alive was a serious concern at this time. Many, like Washington on his deathbed, asked that their bodies not be immediately interred in case they might be suffering from suspended animation. — Gordon S. Wood

Old women are more reconciled to death than old men. By bringing life to the world, we come to see ourselves as debtors. What's given is taken. — R. Scott Bakker

When debtors once have borrowed all we have to lend, they are very apt to grow shy of their creditors' company. — John Vanbrugh

We are
debtors who cannot pay, yet we have been released from the threat of debtors' prison. It is an insult to God for us to withhold forgiveness and grace from those who ask us, while claiming to be forgiven and saved by grace ourselves. — R.C. Sproul

Creditors have better memories than debtors. — Benjamin Franklin

For many people, the mortgages they took out before 2008 are so high that they would be better off walking away from their houses. That is called "jingle mail," returning the keys to the bank and saying, "You can have the house. I can buy the house next door that's just like this for 20% less, so I'm going to save money and switch." That's what someone like Donald Trump or a real estate investor would do. But the banks are trying to convince the mortgage debtors, the homeowners, not to act in their own self-interest. — Michael Hudson

9 aAfter this manner therefore bpray ye: Our cFather which art in heaven, dHallowed be thy ename. 10 Thy akingdom come. Thy bwill be done cin earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily abread. 12 And forgive us our adebts, as we bforgive our debtors. 13 aAnd blead us not into ctemptation, dbut deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the eglory, for ever. Amen. — Anonymous

All the creditors must appear in the ledger at the right hand side, and all the debtors at the left. All entries made in the ledger have to be double entries - that is, if you make one creditor, you must make someone debtor — Luca Pacioli

We Christians are debtors to all men at all times in all places, but we are so smug to the lostness of men. We've been 'living in Laodicea,' lax, loose, lustful, and lazy. Why is there this criminal indifference to the lostness of men? Our condemnation is that we know how to live better than we are living. — Leonard Ravenhill

Casey meant it when she said, 'Forgive us for our debts as we forgive our debtors,' because they were for her the hardest words to live by, and by saying them, she hoped they'd become possible. Like Ted, Casey would never discuss her ambivalent views on religion. She was honest enough to admit that her privacy cloaked a fear: the fear of being found out as a hypocrite" (Free Food For Millionaires, p.100-101.) — Min Jin Lee

Forgetfulness - a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience. — Ambrose Bierce

There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulant as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors. — Charles Caleb Colton

There were some broken men among these debtors who had been in jail so long, and were so miserable and destitute of friends, so dead to the world, and utterly forgotten and uncared for, that they implored their jailers not to set them free, and to send them, if need were, to some other place of custody. But — Charles Dickens

Every sensible banker understands that Greece should not have received any more money: a bankrupt state that can never be expected to repay loans is not a good debtor. — Yanis Varoufakis

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

The class-struggles of the ancient world took the form chiefly of a contest between debtors and creditors, which in Rome ended in the ruin of the plebeian debtors. They were displaced by slaves. In the middle ages the contest ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors, who lost their political power together with the economic basis on which it was established. Nevertheless, the money relation of debtor and creditor that existed at these two periods reflected only the deeper-lying antagonism between the general economic conditions of existence of the classes in question. — Karl Marx

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

8Do not be like them, e for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 f Pray then like this: g Our Father in heaven, h hallowed be i your name. [1] 10 j Your kingdom come, k your will be done, [2] l on earth as it is in heaven. 11 m Give us n this day our daily bread, [3] 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And o lead us not into temptation, but p deliver us from q evil. [4] 14 r For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 s but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. — Anonymous

And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.'
To remit debts is to renounce our own personality. It means renouncing everything that goes to make up our ego, without any exception. It means knowing that in the ego there is nothing whatever, no psychological element, that external circumstances could not do away with. It means accepting that truth. It means being happy that things should be so. — Simone Weil

Yes, business really does change. 400 years ago, corporations were formed by royal decree. 300 years ago, many countries were powered by slave labour, or its closest moral equivalent. 200 years ago, debtors didn't go bankrupt, they went to prison. 100 years ago - well, business is largely the same as it was a century ago. And that's exactly the problem. Business hasn't changed, but today's array of tectonic global shocks demands a different, radically better kind of business. Yesterday's corporations visibly cannot meet today's economic challenges. — Umair Haque

The fellow who eggs you on to avenge yourself will rob you of what you were going to say - as we forgive our debtors . When you have forfeited that, all your sins will be held against you; absolutely nothing is forgiven. — Saint Augustine

I regard the inflation acts as wrong in all ways. Personally I am one of the noble army of debtors, and can stand it if others can. But it is a wretched business. — Rutherford B. Hayes

All men are interdependent. Every nation is an heir of a vast treasury of ideas and labor to which both the living and the dead of all nations have contributed. Whether we realize it or not, each of us lives eternally 'in the red.' We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men and women. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Jesus used small things to describe his kingdom: a sprinkling of yeast that causes the whole loaf to rise, a pinch of salt that preserves a slab of meat, the smallest seed in the garden that grows into a great bush in which the birds of the air come to nest. Practices that used to be common - human sacrifice, slavery, duels to the death, child labor, exploitation of women, racial apartheid, debtors' prisons, the killing of the elderly and incurably ill - have been banned, in large part because of a gospel stream running through cultures influenced by the Christian faith. Once salted and yeasted, society is difficult to un-salt and un-yeast. Many — Philip Yancey

Depreciation of money can benefit debtors only when it is unforeseen. If inflationary measures and a reduction of the value of money are expected, then those who lend money will demand higher interest in order to compensate their probable loss of capital, and those who seek loans will be prepared to pay the higher interest because they have a prospect of gaining on capital account. — Ludwig Von Mises

His debtors always assumed he'd demand their firstborn. Like I'm fucking Rumpelstiltskin? What would Lothaire do with countless squalling babes? Raise them in a kennel? — Kresley Cole

The leaders of Jamestown had borrowed directly from the Roman model of slavery: abandoned children and debtors were made slaves. — Nancy Isenberg

We are debtors to every man to give him the gospel in the same measure in which we have received it. — P.F. Bresee

IMF is really designed to protect creditors not debtors. — David Graeber

Get back, you defaulting maggots!" Racso's bellow always made me flinch, each utterance of it scoring the hate I had for him a little deeper. The debtors moved back from the bars as Racso's baton rattled across them, the actual maggots stayed where they were, chewing on the ruins of Artos Mantona's eyeballs with tiny mouths. "Back! — Mark Lawrence

Grace finds us beggars but leaves us debtors. — Augustus Toplady

As these debts become due, rich creditors will be pitted against poor debtors; private-sector taxpayers against public-sector workers, young workers against the retired, domestic voters against foreign bondholders. It is impossible to forecast who will win each of these battles but one thing seems certain: not all these debts will be paid in full. — Philip Coggan

Also, the world contains a lot of people. The statistics of power-law distributions and the events of the past two centuries agree in telling us that a small number of perpetrators can cause a great deal of damage. If somewhere among the world's six billion people there is a zealot who gets his hands on a stray nuclear bomb, he could single-handedly send the statistics through the roof. But even if he did, we would still need an explanation of why homicide rates fell a hundredfold, why slave markets and debtors' prisons have vanished, and why the Soviets and Americans did not go to war over Cuba, to say nothing of Canada and Spain over flatfish. — Steven Pinker

Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Whenever anybody whom we love dies, we discover that although death is commonplace it is terribly original. We may have thought about it all our lives, but if it comes close to us, it is quite a new, strange thing to us, for which we are entirely unprepared. It may, perhaps, not be the bare loss so much as the strength of the bond which is broken that is the surprise, and we are debtors in a way to death for revealing something in us which ordinary life disguises. — William Hale White

Whatever you haven't forgiven in your mate, forgive it today. Let it go. Just as we ask Jesus to "forgive us our debts" each day, we must ask Him to help us "forgive our debtors" each day as well. — Alex Kendrick

Through a tree we were made debtors to God; so through a tree we have our debt canceled. — Irenaeus Of Lyons

Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love
it just happens!
but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch of happy horseshit. Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left
the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together. — Sherman Alexie

In friendship we are all debtors. We all owe each other for a thousand small kindnesses, for little moments of grace in the chaos. — Emery Lord

When the value of money is increased, then those are enriched who at the time possess credit money or claims to credit money. Their enrichment must be paid for by debtors, among them the State (i.e., the tax-payers). Yet those who are enriched by the increase in the value of money are not the same as those who were injured by the depreciation of money in the course of the inflation; and those who must bear the cost of the policy of raising the value of money are not the same as those who benefited by its depreciation. To carry out a deflationary policy is not to do away with the consequences of inflation. You cannot make good an old breach of the law by committing a new one. — Ludwig Von Mises

[I]f you happen to have any money, lock it up quickly; if you happen to have any jewels, hide them directly; if you happen to have any debtors, make them pay you, or any creditors, don't pay them. — Alexandre Dumas

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. MAT6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. MAT6:11 Give us this day our daily bread. MAT6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. MAT6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. — Anonymous

It is the foot-loose, those who have nothing to lose and much to gain, and (quite naturally) those who have not scrupulously kept all the laws - or who have felt the heavy hand of church discipline--who are most attracted to a new frontier. The first miners in California, the debtors sent to Georgia, the 'criminals' deported to Australia, were likewise held in scorn by upright stay-at-homes. What they made of themselves, and what their sons became, indicate that, for all the hard things said about them, they were hardly 'the scum of the nation. — James G. Leyburn

Most people think of the economy as producing goods and services and paying labor to buy what it produces. But a growing part of the economy in every country has been the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which comprises the rent and interest paid to the economy's balance sheet of assets by debtors and rent payers. — Michael Hudson

The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having ... — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Forgive Us Our Debts as We Forgive Our Debtors The fifth petition concerns our relationships, both with God and others. Luther, who for years struggled mightily and personally with the issues of guilt and pardon, gives a clarion call to seek God's forgiveness every day in prayer: If anyone insists on his own goodness and despises others . . . let him look into himself when this petition confronts him. He will find he is no better than others and that in the presence of God everyone must duck his head and come into the joy of forgiveness only through the low door of humility.210 — Timothy Keller

I'll bet you want to know how a person like Stocky can be thrown into a debtors' prison, something this country outlawed about two hundred years ago. Right?" Samantha slowly nodded. Mattie continued, "More than likely, you're also certain that throwing someone in jail because he cannot pay a fine or a fee violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. And, you are no doubt familiar with the 1983 Supreme Court decision, the name escapes me right now, in which the Court ruled that before a person can be thrown in jail for not paying a fine it must be proven that he or she was willfully not paying. In other words, he could pay but he refused. All this and more, right? — John Grisham

The bank's product is debt, because the banks want to make sure that they can get paid for the debt. But ultimately the only party that can pay the debt is the government, because it runs the printing presses. So the debts ultimately either are paid by the government, or they're paid by a huge transfer of property from debtors to creditors - or, the debts are written off. — Michael Hudson

For society to function some kind of reasonable balance has to be stuck between the competing interests of creditors and debtors. Although the mandate of the Bank of Canada was to maintain a delicate balance between encouraging growth and fighting inflation, the Bank opted to focus exclusively on fighting inflation. In doing so it came down heavily in favour of those with financial assets to protect, and against those whose primary need was employment. — Linda McQuaig

Other inflationists realize very well that an increase in the quantity of money reduces the purchasing power of the monetary unit. But they endeavour to secure inflation none-the-less, because of its effect on the value of money; they want depreciation, because they want to favour debtors at the expense of creditors and because they want to encourage exportation and make importation difficult. — Ludwig Von Mises