Active Quote by Thomas Jefferson

A public debt is a public curse.

— James Madison

The ingenious slogan that the public debt does not matter because 'we owe it to ourselves' is clearly absurd.

— Murray Rothbard

I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.

— James Madison

I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.

— James Madison

When Hume and Adam Smith prophesied that a little increase of national debt beyond the then amount of it, would probably occasion bankruptcy; the…

— Thomas Malthus

The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.

— Thomas Jefferson

I am one of those who do not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather a curse to a republic;…

— Andrew Jackson

The public psychology of going into debt for gain passes through several more or less distinct phases: (a) the lure of big prospective dividends…

— Irving Fisher

Debt has become a part of who we are.

— Dave Ramsey

The national debt has given rise to joint stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage , in a…

— Karl Marx

“Debt . . . . that peculiar nexus where money, narrative or story, and religious belief intersect, often with explosive force.”

— Margaret Atwood

What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt.

— P. J. O'Rourke