Balki Bartokomous

Debt is to man what the serpent is to the bird; its eye fascinates, its breath poisons, its coil crushes sinew and bone, its jaw is the pitiless grave.

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

A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.

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

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill!

There are but two ways of paying debt-increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.

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

Student loans have been helpful to many. But they offer neither incentive nor assistance to those students who, by reason of family or other obligations, are unable or unwilling to go deeper into debt. … It is, moreover, only prudent economic and social policy for the public to share part of the costs of the long period of higher education for those whose development is essential to our national economic and social well-being. All of us share in the benefits – all should share in the costs.

A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

Debt rolls a man over and over, binding him hand and foot, and letting him hang upon the fatal mesh until the long-legged interest devours him.

The impulse dances inside the debt.

[Credit is a system whereby] a person who can’t pay, gets another person who can’t pay, to guarantee that he can pay.

To preserve their independence, we must not let our rules load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.

The second vice is lying, the first is running in debt.