Quotes on National Debt

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

I found this national debt doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.

Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.

..avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.

To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.

No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.

By making this wine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt.

It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith."

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx - first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Government being Big Brother.

No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance.

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.

It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse.