Calvin Coolidge Quotes

We borrowed money, it helped us with bonds and what not, and the Federal Government backed it, but it was a guarantee, it was not a grant. And we not only paid it off, but we paid it off ahead of time.

We have trouble, my friends, in the country, because we have too much money owing, the greatest indebtedness that has every been given to civilization … Two hundred and seventy-two thousand millions of dollars of debts are owed by the various people of this country today. Why, my friends, that cannot be paid. It is not possible for that kind of debt to be paid.

I fully believe that the U.S. has the obligation to honor its debt.

Could you let me have the 3 weeks due to me now and if I work again before August I must of course repay you at the rate of exchange you let me have it at now if you kindly will.

If you have a lot of short-term debt, it means that all of that money can be demanded in a very short period of time. Technically, short-term debt means money that's coming due within a year. Typically, it means money that's coming due within 30 to 90 days.

To protect the national honor, every dollar of Government indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract. Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far toward strengthening a credit which ought to be the best in the world.

Those who say we can continue to indefinitely borrow from our children and grandchildren and generations to come in fact are eroding our ability to do what we ought to do in education, in health care and in other things.

Whenever you borrow money, the people you borrow it from have leverage over you.

If a national debt in considered a national blessing, then we can get on by borrowing. But as I believe it is a natural curse, my vow shall be to pay the national debt, to prevent a moneyed aristocracy from growing up around our administration that must bend to its views, and ultimately destroy the liberty of our country.

We have to make debt evil.

I firmly believe that the U.S. has to honor its debt.

In this business, if you don't pay your debts you're finished.

Raising the debt ceiling is not additional spending. It is simply saying, you, the United States of America, can continue to borrow the money you need to pay the bills you have already rung up.

When you borrow money, you should always think how you're going to pay it back.

America pays its bills. It always has. It always will. The fact that Washington is now debating whether to honor its debts and obligations, then, should come as a surprise. But playing political football with a necessary vote to raise the nation's debt ceiling has become as predictable as a Twitter rant from Charlie Sheen.

The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes—not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt.

Treasury notes are a precarious substitute either for coin or for bank notes, charges as they are with a growing interest, productive of no countervailing profit or emolument, and exposed to every breadth of popular prejudice or alarm.

You just don't see people running through the streets to have the deficit cut.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which, if acted on, would save one half the wars of the world.

May the debt of the United States be discharged with speed and punctuality; and let not the people be deceived, by having the funds, established for that purpose, put to other uses.

As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow from—so it must be with a government.

A public debt is a public curse and in a representative government greater than any other.

When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretend payment.

A national debt is the price of liberty.

Between debt and taxes Americans had usually chosen debt.