Time Debt Quotes & Sayings

happiness is a journey, not a destination. for a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. but there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. at last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. this perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. happiness is the way. so treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one. — Souza

The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves. Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water, control of AIDS and other needs.' — Jeffrey Sachs

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

It has been proposed that monetary liabilities should be settled in terms of gold and not according to their nominal amount. If this proposal were adopted, for each mark that had been borrowed that sum would have to be repaid that could at the time of repayment buy the same weight of gold as one mark could at the time when the debt contract was entered into. The fact that such proposals are now put forward and meet with approval shows that etatism has already lost its hold on the monetary system and that inflationary policies are inevitably approaching their end. Even only a few years ago, such a proposal would either have been ridiculed or else branded as high treason. — Ludwig Von Mises

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, 'I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.' Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. — John Stott

You need to add a new voice inside your head, one that says, "So what?" What if you don't get married by 30? So what? What if you haven't paid off your loans or debt by 35? So what? What if you're not a stand-out success by 28? So what? If you were to achieve everything you wanted in life by the age of 30, then what would you do for the next fifty years? You have time. You don't have to get to everything right now. — Alexandra Robbins

I've been in football a long time and people have problems through debt, drugs, drink and family. — Gordon Strachan

We're all living on borrowed time. The trick is to come up with works of sufficient interest to pay off the debt. — John M. Ford

We preach free enterprise capitalism. We believe in it, we give our lives in war for it, but the closest most of us come to profiting from it are a few miserable shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay large enough dividends to keep a small mouse in cheese. The truth is, most of us are job serfs. At a time when invested capital returns 20 to 30 percent, we have no capital. We only have our wages and salaries, and a debt so high that something like 20c on every dollar we earn is spent to pay off what we owe. — Nicholas Von Hoffman

Generally, I've observed, we seek changes that fall into the "Essential Seven." People - including me - most want to foster the habits that will allow them to: 1. Eat and drink more healthfully (give up sugar, eat more vegetables, drink less alcohol) 2. Exercise regularly 3. Save, spend, and earn wisely (save regularly, pay down debt, donate to worthy causes, stick to a budget) 4. Rest, relax, and enjoy (stop watching TV in bed, turn off a cell phone, spend time in nature, cultivate silence, get enough sleep, spend less time in the car) 5. Accomplish more, stop procrastinating (practice an instrument, work without interruption, learn a language, maintain a blog) 6. Simplify, clear, clean, and organize (make the bed, file regularly, put keys away in the same place, recycle) 7. Engage more deeply in relationships - with other people, with God, with the world (call friends, volunteer, have more sex, spend more time with family, attend religious services) — Gretchen Rubin

A year earlier, no company had been accorded more faith than Enron; by late November, none was trusted less. And so, a gasping gurgle, a desperate SOS: Enron, the emblem of free markets, the champion of deregulation, reached into its depleted treasury and forked over $100,000 to each of the major political parties' campaign war chests. Then, it shuttered its online trading unit - its erstwhile gem. On November 28, Standard & Poor's downgraded Enron to junk-bond level - which triggered provisions in Enron's debt requiring it to immediately repay billions of its obligations. This it could not do. Its stock was seventy cents and falling, and, now, no gatekeepers and no credit remained. Accordingly, in the first week of December, Enron, the archetype of shareholder value, availed itself of the time-honored protection for those who have lost their credit: bankruptcy. — Roger Lowenstein

There is slow growth, but it is positive slow growth. At the same time, ratios of debt-to-incomes go down. That's a beautiful deleveraging. — Ray Dalio

in order to actually do something new, you have to get clear on why you are willing to expend all that energy. Why do you want to start that new hobby, have time alone with your spouse, get more sleep, move across the country, get out of debt? The benefits of where you're headed need to be clear. Just as you need a powerful what, you need a meaningful why. — M.J. Ryan

The model for our early bankruptcy laws was Deuteronomy, the idea that, under certain circumstances - in Deuteronomy, it is simply the passage of seven years' time - people are released from debt, simply because they are released from debt. No more debt. You start over again. This has been a very powerful model in this country. It's being destroyed now. People talk about how much new employment, new wealth, and so on are continuously generated in this country. — Marilynne Robinson

Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a "disciplinary technique," and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the "disciplinarian culture." This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy. — Noam Chomsky

[Fiscal prudence] means spending wisely, reducing waste, collecting sufficient taxes to pay for the public goods and services we want, keeping budgets in relative balance over time, and keeping debt coming down, at least during reasonably good times. — Alex Himelfarb

This law represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means completed
a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions, to act as a protection to future administrations of the Government against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy
a law to flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation
in other words, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

We owe more money than any Nation in the World, and we are LOWERING TAXES. When is the time to pay off a debt if it is not when you are doing well? You let a Politician return home from Washington and announce, 'Boys we lowered your taxes. We had to borrow the money to do it, but we did it.' Say, they would elect him for life. — Will Rogers

God taking from us and loving us at the same time by providing comforters was a kind of spiritual equanimity. It seemed a phenomenon of life how a death insinuates us into the debt of those who stand by us in trouble and console us. — Susan Vreeland

If I went in debt a million dollars every time I committed genocide, I'd be our economy. — Dr. Seuss

Still, we've gone soft since those days of wartime sacrifice, haven't we? Contemporary humans are too self-centered, too addicted to gratification to live without the full freedom to satisfy our every whim - or so our culture tells us every day. And yet the truth is that we continue to make collective sacrifices in the name of an abstract greater good all the time. We sacrifice our pensions, our hard-won labor rights, our arts and after-school programs. We send our kids to learn in ever more crowded classrooms, led by ever more harried teachers. We accept that we have to pay dramatically more for the destructive energy sources that power our transportation and our lives. We accept that bus and subway fares go up and up while service fails to improve or degenerates. We accept that a public university education should result in a debt that will take half a lifetime to pay off when such a thing was unheard of a generation ago. — Naomi Klein

[Jesus] tilted His head back, pulled up one last time to draw breath and cried, "Tetelestai!" It was a Greek expression most everyone present would have understood. It was an accounting term. Archaeologists have found papyrus tax receipts with "Tetelestai" written across them, meaning "paid in full." With Jesus' last breath on the cross, He declared the debt of sin cancelled, completely satisfied. Nothing else required. Not good deeds. Not generous donations. Not penance or confession or baptism or ... or ... or ... nothing. The penalty for sin is death, and we were all born hopelessly in debt. He paid our debt in full by giving His life so that we might live forever. — Charles R. Swindoll

Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting, and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction. Only a few years ago I enjoyed my tranquility; now I am so disturbed by the outer world and by human quality in general that I want to put things right, as though I still owed a debt to life. I must calm down. I am far too frail to indulge in moral fervor. — Florida Scott-Maxwell

However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradlerules his world ... The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time. — Frank Pittman

The only frontier now left to exploit is not a frontier in space but a frontier in time. We steal the future from our children by plunging massively deeper and deeper into debt. — Terence McKenna

In the mid-1980s, the ratio of debt to personal disposable income for American households was 65 percent. During the next two decades, U.S. household leverage more than doubled, reaching an all-time high of 133 percent in 2007. — Katherine Porter

At this time - we're in a dramatic crisis - euro bonds are precisely the wrong answer. They lead us into a debt union, not a stability union. Each country has to take its own steps to reduce its debt. — Angela Merkel

Debt needs a constant drip of blood, and that blood comes from your gas tank of life: time. And since time is fixed, an increase in indentured time comes from only one source: your free time. — M.J. DeMarco

1. Investors give fund managers money at the wrong time. Now that you've had some time to read this book and understand the importance of buying stocks during fear cycles and holding during greed cycles, this first indicator should make sense. To understand this principle, imagine that you're the fund manager of a $100 billion investment fund. When the stock market crashes and you're able to purchase severely undervalued businesses with minimal debt, not only do you lack funds to invest, but all your resources are being depleted by scared investors. Instead of receiving money to buy the great deals, your investors are selling their shares in the fund and you don't have the capacity to take advantage of the market behavior. This reason alone severely handicaps fund managers as they attempt to beat the market. — Preston G. Pysh

We are people of worship and work in service to God and to each other. It's that simple. It's that hard. While many run from Islam, or from poverty, immigration, AIDS, third-world debt relief, the church runs toward them all. It is a dangerous mission. But it is the mission to which God has called us. In our baptism, he calls us to a life of search and rescue. Each time we gather, we do so with the full knowledge that we are being sent. Sent to usher in the shalom of God, to bring shalom to every person, space, and place. The first step in not killing your Muslim neighbor is to join a church that reads the gospels (particularly Luke 10) and puts those words into action. We're moving beyond stereotypes. The future depends upon it. Beyond fear. Beyond anger. Beyond rage. Beyond caricatures. So be bold. And do not be afraid. — Joshua Graves

I had been a magistrate for almost eleven years. I watched the whole of human life come through my court: the hopeless waifs who couldn't get themselves together sufficiently even to make a court appointment on time; the repeat offenders; the angry, hard-faced young men and exhausted, debt-ridden mothers. It's quite hard to stay calm and understanding when you see the same faces, the same mistakes made again and again. I could sometimes hear the impatience in my tone. It could be oddly dispiriting, the blank refusal of humankind to even attempt to function responsibly. And — Jojo Moyes

When one wizard saves another wizard's life, it creates a certain bond between them. And I'm much mistaken if Voldemort wants his servant in the debt of Harry Potter."
"I don't want a connection with Pettigrew!" said Harry. "He betrayed my parents!"
"This is magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable, Harry. But trust me, the time may come when you will be very glad you saved Pettigrew's life. — J.K. Rowling

There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet everybody fools us out of it who has a mind to do it. If a man borrows a paltry sum of money, there must needs be bonds and securities, and every common civility is presently charged upon account. But he who has my time thinks he owes me nothing for it, though it be a debt that gratitude itself can never repay. — Seneca The Younger

We have more 'things per person' than any other nation in history. Closets are full, storage space is used up, and cars can't fit into garages. Having first imprisoned us with debt. Possessions then take over our houses and occupy our time. This begins to sound like an invasion. Everything I own owns me. Why would I want more? — Richard A. Swenson

The United States is at a critical juncture in time. Our government is riddled with historic debt, and the limited resources of philanthropic and non-profit efforts cannot meet the scale of social challenges we face with necessary force. — Simon Mainwaring

You woke in the morning with the weight of doom on your head. You lay with eyes shut wondering why you dreaded the day; was it a debt, was it a lost love? -and then you remembered the nightmare ... This was no time for beauty, for love, or private future ... There was no future; everyone waited, marked time, waited. For what? — Dawn Powell

This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come. There are others for whom the day will break like a pang of remorse; and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough to give them the rest that they need. And I - who have lost my day - what right do I have to wish that tomorrow comes? — Alain-Fournier

The want of parsimony, in time of peace, imposes the necessity of contracting debt in time of war. When — Adam Smith

Humans are capable of so much more. Power mongers like you have stripped away what is most valuable to us, the importance of our heritage and family values. We have been robbed of this, blinded by your authority, while you encourage us to burry ourselves in debt and rely on our corrupt governments. Men and women around the world have been forced to work long hours to keep up with inflated debts, all the while abandoning the families they struggle to support. History repeats, and repeats. It's time to break the cycle and start anew. — Aaron B. Powell

Why did you do it?" I say. "You want me dead. You were willing to do it yourself! What changed?" He presses his lips together and doesn't look away, not for a long time. Then he opens his mouth, hesitates, and finally says, " I can't be in anyone's debt. Okay? The idea that I owed you something made me sick. I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going to vomit. Indebted to a stiff? It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And I couldn't have it. — Veronica Roth

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 forgone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The dead die hard, trespassers on the beyond, they must take the place as they find it, the shafts and manholes back into the muck, till such time as the lord of the manor incurs through his long acquiescence a duty of care in respect of them. They are free among the dead by all means, then their troubles are over, their natural troubles. But the debt of nature, that scandalous post-obit on one's own estate, can no more be discharged by kicking the bucket than descent can be made into the same stream twice. This is a true saying. — Samuel Beckett

That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt. Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 - that is what it amounts to, with interest. — Thomas A. Edison

Some have been ensnared in the net of excessive debt. The net of interest holds them fast, requiring them to sell their time and energies to meet the demands of creditors. They surrender their freedom, becoming slaves to their own extravagance. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

Voiding 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 may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear. — George Washington

Declined. I went inside to pay cash. This had happened before, but not often. There was something about that word that sucked the self-respect out of your soul. This time it sucked out all my hope as well. — James Anderson

I do believe that we should substantially lower student debt in this country, which is crushing millions of people. We pay for it, in my view, by a tax on Wall Street speculation. The middle class bailed out Wall Street in their time of need. Now, it is Wall Street's time to help the middle class. — Bernie Sanders

Pain is a debt paid off with time. — Matt Haig

What this means is that the entire business model for something like Chase's credit card business is not much more than a gigantic welfare fraud scheme. These companies borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from the Fed at rock-bottom rates, then turn around and lend it out to the world at 5, 10, 15, 20 percent, as credit cards and mortgages, boat loans and aircraft loans, and so on. If you pay it back, great, it's a 500 percent or 1,000 percent or 4,000 percent profit for the bank. If you don't pay it back, the company can put your name in the hopper to be sued. A $5,000 debt on a credit card for the now-defunct Circuit City, which was actually a Chase card, became a $13,000 or $14,000 debt by the time the bank finished applying fees and penalties. Just like a welfare application, you have to read the fine print. "They make more on lawsuits than they make on credit interest," says Linda. — Matt Taibbi

Debt is always negative, no matter how positively you try to look at it. The "minus" sign in front of your bank balance is a dead giveaway, despite what you might think about leveraging or whatever. It's even worse when it's a credit card or a student loan, and you can't even remember what you've bought or learned with it. Sure, the minimum repayments will eventually cancel it out, but by that time you will most likely have dentures and be peeing anywhere you damn well please. — Ana Spoke

No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.

~Message to the House of Representatives, 3 December 1793 — George Washington

Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment. — Bobby Hull

The difference between the past and the present is that individual freedom and security no longer fall to be protected solely through the D vehicle of common-law maxims and presumptions which may be altered or repealed by statute, but are now protected by entrenched constitutional provisions which neither the Legislature nor the Executive may abridge. It would accordingly be improper for us to hold constitutional a system which, as Sachs J has noted, confers on creditors the power to consign the person of an impecunious debtor to prison at will and without the interposition at the crucial time of a judicial officer. — Pius Langa

In time of peace there can, at all events, be no justification for the creation of a permanent debt by the Federal Government. Its limited range of constitutional duties may certainly under such circumstances be performed without such a resort. — Martin Van Buren

Hettites appeal to us not alone because of the influence they once exercised on the fortunes of the Chosen People, not alone because a Hittite was the wife of David and the ancestress of Christ, but also on account of the debt which the civilisation of our own Europe owes to them. Our culture is the inheritance we have received from ancient Greece, and the first beginnings of Greek culture were derived from the Hittite conquerors of Asia Minor ... The Hittites carried the time-worn civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt to the furthest boundary of Asia, and there handed them over to the West in the grey dawn of European history. — A.H. Sayce

Not the slow Hearse, where nod the sable plumes,
The Parian Statue, bending o'er the Urn,
The dark robe floating, the dejection worn
On the dropt eye, and lip no smile illumes;
Not all this pomp of sorrow, that presumes
It pays Affection's debt, is due concern
To the FOR EVER ABSENT, tho' it mourn
Fashion's allotted time. If Time consumes,
While Life is ours, the precious vestal-flame
Memory shou'd hourly feed; - if, thro' each day,
She with whate'er we see, hear, think, or say,
Blend not the image of the vanish'd Frame,
O! can the alien Heart expect to prove,
In worlds of light and life, a reunited love! — Anna Seward

approach reveals a point that is often overlooked. It is certainly desirable that societies with bad institutions should get better ones. We see that process going on today all over the world, in much of Asia, in parts of South America and even in Africa. But there is a more insidious process that is going on at the same time, whereby societies with good institutions gradually get worse ones. Why is this? Who exactly are the enemies of the rule of law, the people responsible for the marked deterioration that I detect in our institutions on both sides of the Atlantic? My answers to these questions owe a considerable debt to a now large body of — Niall Ferguson

But I must work on in full calmness and serenity ... The world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it, because I have walked on the earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express a sincere human feeling. So this work is the aim-and through concentration upon that one idea, everything one does is simplified. Now the work goes slowly-a reason the more to lose no time. — Vincent Van Gogh

For too many years, politicians in Washington have been eager to pledge more hard-earned taxpayer dollars to help deal with the student debt load. But this doesn't sit right with the many Americans who take pride in making fiscally responsible choices and paying off their loans on time. — John Kline

My affinity, as a novelist, with Dickens has been overstated. I relish the way everything in his prose pulsates with life force, and I'm in debt to him every time I invest inanimate objects with uncanny animism. But his female characters annoy me. — Michel Faber

We prefer: large purchases (at least $5 million of after-tax earnings), demonstrated consistent earning power (future projections are of little interest to us, nor are "turn-around" situations), businesses earning good returns on equity while employing little or no debt, management in place (we can't supply it), simple businesses (if there's lots of technology, we won't understand it), an offering price (we don't want to waste our time or that of the seller by talking, even preliminarily, about a transaction when price is unknown). — Warren Buffett

Like all other self-respecting peoples, we have no intention of paying our debts. Or, to be more nearly accurate, the capitalists who expect to exploit us " for all time and eternity " have no intention of permitting us to pay our debts. They trump up new schemes to cause us to go more deeply into their debt. They intoxicate us with the strong fumes of "world power." They tell us how fine a thing it is to be reckoned among the great nations of the world. They cause us to maintain great military establishments and to build more and greater dreadnoughts. Thirty years ago we spent almost nothing on the navy and little more on the army. Now we are spending $300,000,000 a year on the army and navy. Almost a million dollars every week-day. Sixty-five cents of every dollar that is raised by the American government by taxation is spent for wars past or to come - for pensions, battleships or soldiers. — Anonymous

She planted that terror of debt so deeply in her children that even now, in a changed economic pattern where indebtedness is a part of living, I become restless when a bill is two days overdue. Olive never accepted the time-payment plan when it became popular. A thing bought on time was a thing you did not own and for which you were in debt. She saved for things she wanted, and this meant that the neighbours had new gadgets as much as two years before we did. — John Steinbeck

Sometimes people say to me, "I want to write, but I have five kids, a full-time job, a wife who beats me, a tremendous debt to my parents," and so on.
I say to them, "There is no excuse. If you want to write, write. This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait. Make the time now, even if it is ten minutes once a week. — Natalie Goldberg

It's time to start thinking differently about money and debt and start the healing process - and the process toward wealth and freedom. 'Freedom from Bad Debt' can get you started. — Robert Kiyosaki

When you have the money- and "you" are a big, economically and culturally vital nation- you get more than just a higher standard of living for your citizens. You get power and influence, and a much-enhanced ability to act out. When the money drains out, you can maintain the edge in living standards of your citizens for a considerable time (as long as others are willing to hold your growing debt and pile interest payments on top). But you lose power, especially the power to ignore others, quite quickly, though hopefully, in quiet, nonconfrontational ways.And you lose influence- the ability to have your wishes, ideas, and folkways willingly accepted, eagerly copied, and absorbed into daily life by others. — Stephen S. Cohen

In America, we tax work, investment, employment, savings, and production, while we subsidize non-work, consumption, and debt. It's time we reverse this trend. — Jack Kemp

Try as you may, you cannot put the Lord in your debt. For every time you try to do His will, He simply pours out more blessings upon you. — Ezra Taft Benson

Not all debt is bad. From time to time we should get into debt when there's a good reason for that. — Dan Ariely

Amnesty will not help balance our budget ... In fact, a large-scale amnesty is likely to add trillions of dollars to the debt over time, accelerate Medicare's and Social Security's slide into insolvency and put enormous strain on our public-assistance programs. — Jeff Sessions

At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing"; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams. — Thomas Jefferson

This time, instead of moving oceans and healing planets, let's get our bills in order and pay down the debt so we control our own future. — Artur Davis

The International Monetary Fund basically acted as the world's debt enforcers - "You might say, the high-finance equivalent of the guys who come to break your legs." I launched into historical background, explaining how, during the '70s oil crisis, OPEC countries ended up pouring so much of their newfound riches into Western banks that the banks couldn't figure out where to invest the money; how Citibank and Chase therefore began sending agents around the world trying to convince Third World dictators and politicians to take out loans (at the time, this was called "go-go banking"); how they started out at extremely low rates of interest that almost immediately skyrocketed to 20 percent or so due to tight U.S. money policies in the early '80s; how, during the '80s and '90s, this led to the Third World debt crisis; how the IMF then stepped in to insist that, in order to obtain refinancing, poor countries would be obliged to abandon price supports on — David Graeber

If the outside [our outside circumstances] has become spoilt so be it, don't let the inside [our inner intent] spoil. If you don't have the money to pay off your debt, keep the intent pure within that you want to pay it off. Because you did not let the inner intent spoil, the time to pay off the debt will come. — Dada Bhagwan

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

Militant atheists seek to discredit religion based on a highly selective reading of history. There was a time not long ago - just a couple of centuries - when the Western world was saturated by religion. Militant atheists are quick to attribute many of the most unfortunate aspects of history to religion, yet rarely concede the immense debt that civilization owes to various monotheist religions, which created some of the world's greatest literature, art, and architecture; led the movement to abolish slavery; and fostered the development of science and technology. One should not invalidate these achievements merely because they were developed for religious purposes. If much of science was originally a religious endeavor, does that mean science is not valuable? Is religiously motivated charity not genuine? Is art any less beautiful because it was created to express devotion to God? To regret religion is to regret our civilization and its achievements. — Bruce Sheiman

I give it a fifty-fifty chance of total failure. If Kai refuses to repay a debt he legitimately owes, he'll be dishonoured in front of his entire Flight. Thunderbirds always avenge their dead, honour their word, and pay their debts. Those seem to be the only laws they have." Based on what little time I'd spent with them.
Marc frowned. "It's the 'legitimately owes' part that worries me."
"Thus the fifty-fifty shot of failure." I stared up at the nest, watching for any sign of activity. "It all depends on whether or not I'm able to bullshit him into thinking he owes us."
"The odds are always in your favour when bullshit's involved." Jace grinned, and I couldn't help returning his smile. — Rachel Vincent

I will hurt you for this. I don't know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid. — George R R Martin

And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. — Thomas Jefferson

It's so hard to do anything that doesn't owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you're going to end up doing something that he's probably already done before. It always seem like we're falling behind whatever he came up with. 'Singin' in the Rain' in Clockwork Orange - that was the first time I became so aware of music in movies. So no matter how hard you try to do something new, you're always following behind. — Paul Thomas Anderson

People question me all the time about my experience. They question my experience in politics, and the first thing I always tell them is yes, I have no experience raising taxes over and over. I have no experience increasing the debt in a state. — Jon Runyan

There's nothing inappropriate about having debt in America. It's what helped us grow over time. And it's when debt gets out of control that you worry. — Warren Buffett

Whenever we can, we tend to use debt to fund deals, as Aspen is very cash generative, so it doesn't make sense to issue equity. Over time, we can eliminate debt. — Stephen Saad

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. - FR. ALFRED D'SOUZA — Arianna Huffington

But I can tell you what I believe: When tens of thousands of innocent souls have perished in Darfur-when 11 million children are without health insurance-when our colossal debt subjects our economic future to the whims of Asian bankers-no one can tell me that faith demands this Senate spend its time arguing over a handful of judges. No one with those priorities can use my faith to intimidate me. — John F. Kerry

Robots can now milk cows. Oil prices have fallen globally, meaning both the petro-states and those indirectly propped up by them are weakened. At the same time, slower growth in China has lately shrunk its voracious appetite for African, Australian, and Latin American commodities. China accounted for more than a third of global growth in recent years, and its growth engine multiplied the growth of many of the countries that exported raw materials to Beijing. That has slowed. China's total debt has grown from roughly 150 percent of its GDP in 2007 to around 240 percent today - a massive increase in one decade that is dampening its growth and its imports and shrinking China's wallet for foreign aid and investment in African and Latin American commodity-exporting countries. In — Thomas L. Friedman

Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. No mysterious power will say: - "This man is a fool, if not a knave. He does not deserve time; he shall be cut off at the meter." It is more certain than consols, and payment of income is not affected by Sundays. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste to-morrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you — Arnold Bennett

A man who has taken your time recognises no debt; yet it is the one he can never repay. — Seneca The Younger

I will never forget, one day [when I] was six years old and I was playing beside the road and this plantation owner drove up to me and stopped and asked me, could I pick cotton.' I told him I didn't know and he said, Yes, you can. I will give you things that you want from the commissary store,' and he named things like crackerjacks and sardines--and it was a huge list that he called off. So I picked the 30 pounds of cotton that week, but I found out what actually happened was he was trapping me into beginning the work I was to keep doing and I never did get out of his debt again. My parents tried so hard to do what they could to keep us in school, but school didn't last four months out of the year and most of the time we didn't have clothes to wear. — Fannie Lou Hamer

I certainly don't want our nation to go into default, but at the same time, I'm very concerned about our ongoing debt problem. — Randy Hultgren

If you fail to pay your minimums for any debt on time, your credit score will take a major hit and you run the risk of seeing the interest rate on all of your cards go up. An easy way to remind yourself to pay, is to sign up to receive your statements via e-mail. — Alexa Von Tobel

In the early 1990s, Donald Trump was nearly $1 billion in debt personally and $9 billion in debt corporately. An interviewer asked him if he was worried. He replied, "Worrying is a waste of time. Worrying gets in my way of working to solve these problems. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

If you have a lot of short-term debt, it means that all of that money can be demanded in a very short period of time. Technically, short-term debt means money that's coming due within a year. Typically, it means money that's coming due within 30 to 90 days. — Jeffrey Sachs

So this was fame at last! Nothing but a vast debt to be paid to the world in energy, blood, and time. — May Sarton

I do not pretend to give such a sum; I only lend it to you. When you shall return to your country with a good character, you cannot fail of getting into some business, that will in time enable you to pay all your debts. In that case, when you meet with another honest man in similar distress, you must pay me by lending this sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with such another opportunity. I hope it may thus go through many hands, before it meets with a knave that will stop its progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money. — Benjamin Franklin

Anticipated rents, and bills unpaid,
Force many a shining youth into the shade,
Not to redeem his time, but his estate,
And play the fool, but at the cheaper rate. — William Cowper

The innumerable losses of industrial civilization's collapse will, over time, bring forth a new story and a new relationship with people, resources, things, and the earth. It will necessitate living as if our very breath is a gift and every person in our lives is an opportunity to pass on the gifts we have received. The death of the old paradigm and all of the trappings of industrial civilization will provide
space to forge new values, new relationships, and minimize, if not completely obliterate, the concept of debt from human consciousness. — Carolyn Baker

[M]ost people, most of the time, prefer to seek approval or security. [ ... ] Nonetheless, there are in all periods who feel themselves in some fashion to be apart. And it is not too much to say that humanity is very much in debt to such people, whether it chooses to acknowledge the debt or not. — Christopher Hitchens

The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off. — N. T. Wright

My dear Mr. Schwartz, you appeared in the nick of time. It might have been a drama on the stage! I am very much in your debt. — Agatha Christie