100 Famous Quotes About Debt

Let’s face it: not all debt is bad. For example, debt is generally okay whenever it’s used to buy something that may increase in value.

That being said, it’s always best to try and keep your debts to a minimum. So with that in mind, here are, in no particular order, the top 100 quotes about debt compiled by my crack research team, and presented for your enjoyment.

If you’re in the mood, I’d love it if you share your favorite quote from this list — and please … don’t forget to tell everyone why it’s number one in your book!

1. “Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need most.”
— American Proverb

2. “What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?”
— Adam Smith

3. “Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.”
— Ogden Nash

4. “Rather go to bed supperless, than rise in debt.”
— Benjamin Franklin

5. “One can pay back the loan of gold, but one lies forever in debt to those who are kind.”
— Malcolm Forbes

6. “Interest works night and day; in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man’s substance with invisible teeth.”
— Henry Ward Beecher

7. “If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.”
— Earl Wilson

8. “If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.”
— J.P. Getty

9. “Debts are like children — begot with pleasure, but brought forth in pain.”
— Moliere

10. “It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.”
— Rutherford B. Hayes

11. “The impulse dances inside the debt.”
— Jareb Teague

12. “Never spend your money before you have it.”
— Thomas Jefferson

13. “Rich people plan for four generations. Poor people plan for Saturday night.”
— Gloria Steinem

14. “The man who never has money enough to pay his debts has too much of something else.”
— James Lendall Basford

15. “A promise made is a debt unpaid.”
— Robert W. Service

16. “It is poor judgment to countersign anothers note, to become responsible for his debts.”
— The Bible

17. “Here is an equation worth remembering: Five dollars earned minus seven dollars spent equals an unhappy life.”
― Jon Morrison

18. “Debts are like children: the smaller they are the more noise they make.”
— Spanish Proverb

19. “Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open enemies.”
— James H. Aughey

20. “The only man who sticks closer to you in adversity than a friend is a creditor.”
— Unknown

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

22. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan doth oft lose both itself and friend.”
— William Shakespeare

23. “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”
— Norman Vincent Peale

24. “Promises make debt, and debt makes promises.”
— Dutch Proverb

25. “Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

26. “A hundred wagon loads of thoughts will not pay a single ounce of debt.”
— Italian Proverb

27. “When you get in debt you become a slave.”
— Andrew Jackson

28. “Tis against some men’s principle to pay interest, and seems against others interest to pay the principle.”
— Benjamin Franklin

29. “This would be a much better world if more married couples were as deeply in love as they are in debt.”
— Earl Wilson

30. “When a man is in love or in debt, someone else has the advantage.”
— Bill Balance

31. “Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.”
— Ambrose Bierce

32. “No man’s credit is as good as his money.”
— E.W. Howe

33. “There are three kinds of people: the haves, the have-nots, and the have-not-paid-for-what-they-haves.”
— Earl Wilson

34. “Forgetfulness is a gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.”
— Ambrose Bierce

35. “Some people use one-half their ingenuity to get into debt, and the other half to avoid paying it.”
— George Prentice

36. “A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.”
— Oscar Wilde

37. “Remember this: debt is a form of bondage. It is a financial termite.”
— Joseph P. Wirthlin

38. “A man in debt is so far a slave.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

39. “Interest on debts grow without rain.”
— Yiddish Proverb

40. “He that dies pays all debts.”
— William Shakespeare

41. “If someone takes your time, it is the only debt that can’t be repaid.”
— Unknown

42. “It’s better to be anonymously rich than deceptively poor.”
— Len Penzo

43. “Wouldst thou shut up the avenues of ill, Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

44. “If one wants to get out and stay out of debt, then he should act his wage.”
— Unknown

45. “The borrower is servant to the lender.”
— The Bible

46. “Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.”
— Henry Wheeler Shaw

47. “Lying rides upon debts back.”
— Benjamin Franklin

48. “Debts and lies are generally mixed together.”
— Francois Rabelais

49. “Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.”
–– Will Rogers

50. “Who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing.”
— Thomas Tusser

51. “I say to you never involve yourself in debt, and become no man’s surety.”
— Andrew Jackson

52. “Debt is the worst poverty.”
— Thomas Fuller

53. “Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them.”
— George Herbert

54. “One of the greatest disservices you can do a man is to lend him money that he can’t pay back.”
— Jesse Jones

55. “Youth is in danger until it learns to look upon debts as furies.”
— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

56. “Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound.”
— Samuel Johnson

57. “He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

58. “Creditors have better memories than debtors.”
— Benjamin Franklin

59. “Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.”
— Samuel Johnson

60. “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”
— Herbert Hoover

61. “Annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, nineteen pounds; result, happiness. Annual income, twenty pounds; annual expenditure, twenty-one pounds; result, misery.”
— Charles Dickens

62. “A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man; a debt he proposes to pay off with your money.”
— Gordon Liddy

63. “Running into debt isn’t so bad. It’s running into creditors that hurts.”
— Unknown

64. “I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse.”
— James Madison

65. “A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.”
— Everett Dirksen

66. “You can’t spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.”
— Daniel Hannan

67. “Debt is a prolific mother of folly and of crime.”
— Benjamin Disraeli

68. “The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that.”
— Alan Greenspan

69. “Debt is dumb. Cash is king.”
— Dave Ramsey

70. “Debt can turn a free, happy person into a bitter human being.”
— Michael Mihalik

71. “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
— Warren Buffett

72. “If you’re thinking of debt, that’s what you’re going to attract.”
— Bob Proctor

73. “Many delight more in giving of presents than in paying their debts.”
— Sir Philip Sidney

74. “Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.”
— William Wycherley

75. “There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt.”
— Dave Ramsey

76. “A grudge is just another debt owed.”
— Alex London

77. “If you have debt I’m willing to bet that general clutter is a problem for you too.”
— Suze Orman

78. “Debt is the slavery of the free.”
— Publilius Syrus

79. “There are four things every person has more of than they know: sins, debt, years, and foes.”
— Persian Proverb

80. “Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he’s really selling himself to it.”
— Benjamin Franklin

81. “Why will some people who have $20 buy something for $40 if it’s marked down from $100?”
— Clifford Cohen

82. “It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much.”
— Cicero

83. “Debt on anything that depreciates is disastrous.”
— Orrin Woodward

84. “Live within your means, never be in debt, and by husbanding your money you can always lay it out well.”
— Andrew Jackson

85. “It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.”
— Aesop

86. “It takes as much imagination to create debt as to create income.”
— Leonard Orr

87. “A habit of debt is very injurious to the memory.”
— Austin O’Malley

88. “In the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our survival.”
— Norbert Wiener

89. “A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest field.”
— Robert Green Ingersoll

90. “Those have a short Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.”
— Benjamin Franklin

91. “Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.”
— Ezra Pound

92. “The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
— George Bernard Shaw

93. “Credit buying is much like being drunk. The buzz happens immediately, and it gives you a lift. The hangover comes the day after.”
— Joyce Brothers

94. “Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.”
— Henrik Ibsen

95. “The second vice is lying. The first is running in debt.”
— Benjamin Franklin

96. “I like my players to be married and in debt. That’s the way you motivate them.”
— Ernie Banks

97. “There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.”
— Thomas Carlyle

98. “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.”
— Victor Hugo

99. “Buying on the installment plan makes the months shorter and the years longer.”
— Unknown

100. “We all think we’re going to get out of debt.”
— Louie Anderson

Photo Credit: Zak Greant