David Graeber Quotes

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender

The decision to go into debt alters the course and condition of your life. You no longer own it. You are owned.

The way the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed, and taken most of it into their own hands, is as good as Stalin or Hitler.

So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it. It's a huge empire. It's been extremely successful.

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.

Debt is the slavery of the free.

Consciously or subconsciously, we become slaves to debt and social obligation. As a result, we end up more committed to the minutia and less in tune with the bigger picture: our deepest sense of purpose.

We are completely saddled and bridled, and... the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where it will guide.

Debt never sleeps nor sickens nor dies; it never goes to the hospital; it works on Sundays and holidays; it never takes a vacation...it is never laid off work...it buys no food; it wears no clothes; it is unhoused... it has neither weddings nor births nor deaths; it has no love, no sympathy; it is as hard and soulless as a granite cliff. Once in debt, it is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it...and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.

Debt is a trap which man sets and baits himself, and then deliberately gets into.

When you get in debt you become a slave.

Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.

Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.

Armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa

Simply put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too many poor countries and poor people in poverty.

Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did.

Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.

The general principle is that the victors don't look at themselves or concede anything. The defeated typically have to, except when it's beneficial to the powerful for them not to.

For some people, being free means being free to keep their feet on someone else's chest.

Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can't afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a disciplinary technique, and by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the disciplinarian culture. This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy.

on Broadway money rules. Like a host of vultures, the ticket brokers, the speculators, the craft unions, the agents, the backers, the real estate owners move in on the creative body and take their bite. The world of dreams breathes in an iron lung; and without this mechanical pumping it dies.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.

DEBT, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver. As, pent in an aquarium, the troutlet Swims round and round his tank to find an outlet, Pressing his nose against the glass that holds him, Nor ever sees the prison that enfolds him; So the poor debtor, seeing naught around him, Yet feels the narrow limits that impound him, Grieves at his debt and studies to evade it, And finds at last he might as well have paid it.