Lietaer Quotes & Sayings

Conventional money is supposed to be doing everything. By adding in complementary currencies, you actually get different types of things and different outcomes from different complementary currencies. — Bernard Lietaer

Most important, understand that goals are for losers and systems are for winners. — Scott Adams

Money is created through bank debt. When you go for a mortgage through a bank, they give you $100,000 to buy a house and basically send you out into the world to bring back $200,000 in the next twenty years. The first $100,000 is principal, and the second is interest. — Bernard Lietaer

The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in. — Thomas Jefferson

Look at any financial institution, at any bank. They're all photocopies of each other. There's no diversity of institutions and even less diversity of currency. Therefore, just as you say its very logical that an ecosystem like this will collapse, it's very predictable a monetary system like this will collapse, too. And it hasn't finished collapsing, by the way. — Bernard Lietaer

Even in the domain of conventional currencies, this trend is in evidence. Today, 14 U.S. states, namely, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, have taken action to create their own state currency, usually backed by a precious metal such as gold or silver.24 In the case of Utah, for example, the Utah Legislature has passed a bill allowing gold and silver coins to be used as legal tender in the state - and for the value of their precious metal, not just the face value of the coins. Utah's bill allows stores to accept gold and silver coins as legal tender. It also exempts gold and silver transactions from the state's capital gains tax, though that does not shield exchanges from federal taxes. — Bernard A. Lietaer

The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work, and a Wiser World — Bernard Lietaer

My fragrant rose, in the Realm of the Senses, I can feel your shadow. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Complementary currencies work in addition to existing money, rather than replacing existing, official money. There are whole different families of complementary currencies. One of them is local currencies. One is regional currencies. Another is functional currencies. Another is social-purpose currencies. — Bernard Lietaer

Our [American] money system is structurally brittle. It doesn't matter if you put a very clever guy or a stupid guy at the wheel. The clever guy will take a half hour to have an accident, and the stupid guy will take ten minutes. — Bernard Lietaer

If you're bourgeois, money is it. It's all the questions and all the answers. Ain't no E-flat or color blue, only $12.98 or $1,000. If it isn't money, it isn't nothing. — John Coltrane

GREED AND COMPETITION ARE NOT THE RESULT OF IMMUTABLE HUMAN TEMPERMENT ... GREED AND FEAR OF SCARCITY ARE IN FACT BEING CREATED AND AMPLIFIED ... THE DIRECT CONSEQUENCE IS THAT WE HAVE TO FIGHT WITH EACH OTHER IN ORDER TO SURVIVE — Bernard Lietaer

Write about society as news and treat it like sociology. — Clifton Daniel

Basically, for any complex to be sustainable needs to have a balance between two factors: resilience and efficiency. These two factors can be calculated from the structure of the network that is involved in a complex system. A resilient, efficient system needs to be diverse and interconnected. On the other hand, diversity and interconnectivity decrease efficiency. Therefore, the key is an appropriate balance between efficiency and resilience. — Bernard Lietaer

They tried to make me say that I had been with the group of fellows that raped a white woman," Shepherd said. "It was terrible the way I was whipped, there was just knots all over me. They said they were not going to stop whipping me until I said that I was the one. I kept telling them I was in Orlando where I was. Finally, when I couldn't take it anymore, I said yes." Shepherd said yes, he raped Norma Padgett, and the men dropped their hoses. Yates told Shepherd he could have "saved all the beating" if he had just said yes the first time they asked. — Gilbert King

When the banks create the money, they don't create the interest. They send you into the world to compete with everybody else to get the second $100,000 that never was created and bring it back to them. So if we're in a world with zero-growth population, goods, services, and money, the problem would be obvious. — Bernard Lietaer