William Lemke Quotes

The president says, 'There is lots of people worse off than the Farmers.' I don't know who it could be unless it is the fellow who holds the Mortgages on the Farms.

There are a lot of farmers and ranchers who are struggling. I get on my knees every day. If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it.

I don't know how the poor farmers deal with such situations in real life. It's really sad.

We have had a great depression in agriculture, caused mainly by several seasons of bad harvests, and some of our traders have suffered much from a too rapid extension in prosperous years.

When I was a teenager, my father went bust. He could have declared himself bankrupt, but he was an honourable man and he insisted on paying back all his debts. That almost ruined the family. I was aware that my mother and father couldn't control things anymore. I guess I was afraid that we would end up on the street.

The women who file for bankruptcy played by all the rules, but they are still in economic freefall.

The chief problem with lower income farmers is poverty

We have been discovering that vast numbers of our farming population live in a poverty more abject than that of many of the farmers of Europe, whom we are wont to call peasants

We were under a lot of financial pressure when I was growing up.

Better to be screwed physically than financially.

We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt.

Even families with health insurance are quite vulnerable to a severe economic reversal if someone gets sick.

My parents didn't have any money.

It's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of enforced idleness, deep debt, and gnawing self-doubt.

High interest rates are the cruelest taxes of all.

If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year.

Heavy rents which are become so great a burden to us that we are not scarcely able to bear. Between landlord and rectors, the very marrow is screwed out of our bones ….They have reduced us to such a deplorable state by such grievous oppressions that the poor is turned black in the face … and they are rendered incapable to support their starving families … that they have not even food, nor raiment to secure them from the extremes of weather.

I'm one of many who have seen their parents and their friends lose their jobs, lose their income, lose their livelihood because of the European Union.

Financial problems cause distress and loss of self-respect.

Today, somewhere in America, more foreclosures. More auctions. Another farmer plots his own death. And another. There is an art to making your death by combine look like an accident.

At my lowest point, I was nearly $700,000 in debt.

My parents got married when they were 16, and they never had any money.

If you're one car accident away from poverty, you're on a high wire without a safety net. And that's a challenging proposition.

The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.

While growing up, I saw how finances can play havoc in anybody's life. While we were comfortable, money didn't come easy.