Walter Bagehot Quotes

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

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

I lend people money, but I'd never lend something that would jeopardise a friendship if I didn't get it back.

The creditor hath a better memory than the debtor.

… international confidence is the foundation stone of international credit, and international credit is essential to international trade.

Public credit is suspicion asleep.

The farmer's way of saving money: to be owed by someone he trusted.

There is no class of people in the world, who have such good memories as creditors.

Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone: but what we have requires no proof.

I don't owe one man one cent. Anywhere.

Even if you feel like your debt is just never going to go away, think long and hard before declaring bankruptcy. Declaring bankruptcy means that getting a loan for anything will be next to impossible for the next 10 years.

A person who can't pay gets another person who can't pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don't make either of them able to do a walking-match.

Financially, I've lost money and made money, but I know my way around financially.

You know it is not my interest to pay the principal, or my principal to pay the interest.

Debt is one person's liability, but another person's asset.

Those have a short Lent who owe money to be paid at Easter.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

It's not long-term debt if the money is immediately paid back.

The farmer may often have suffered from excessive interest and grasping creditors; but it was no less frequently the avarice of the lender that got him into trouble than the fact that he was too sanguine and too prone to believe that he could safely go into debt, on the assumption that crops and prices in the future would equal those in the present.

People paid their 3 percent a month interest without considering it excessive.

A man needs credit. Especially when he has no money.

'Credit' is another word for trustworthiness.

Never lend people money you can't afford to give them as a gift.

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit.

This is no time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship without security.