Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A debt may get mouldy, but it never decays.

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

If you’re thinking of debt, that’s what you’re going to attract.

Debt is such a powerful tool, it is such a useful tool, it’s much better than colonialism ever was because you can keep control without having an army, without having a whole administration.

Debts are like children: the smaller they are the more noise they make.

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.

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

We all think we’re going to get out of debt.

Owing money has never concerned me so long as I know where it could be repaid.

Even when I tweeted that I was in debt, that gave me power.

People are living longer than ever before, a phenomenon undoubtedly made necessary by the 30-year mortgage.

Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open enemies.

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.

Debt, we’ve learned, is the match that lights the fire of every crisis. Every crisis has its own set of villains – pick your favorite: bankers, regulators, central bankers, politicians, overzealous consumers, credit rating agencies – but all require one similar ingredient to create a true crisis: too much leverage.

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