“The sale of assets is common with individuals and states when they run into financial difficulties. First, all the Georgian silver goes, and then all that nice furniture that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go.”

—  Harold Macmillan

"Stockton attacks Thatcher policies", The Times, 9 November 1985, p. 1.
Speech to the Tory Reform Group, 8 November 1985. Often quoted as "selling off the family silver".
1980s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The sale of assets is common with individuals and states when they run into financial difficulties. First, all the Geor…" by Harold Macmillan?
Harold Macmillan photo
Harold Macmillan 26
British politician 1894–1986

Related quotes

“Privatization: Disposing of public sector assets at low prices and high sales commissions to powerful groups and individuals who generously supported the ruling party’s last election campaign. It provides short-run cash windfalls to the government, while weakening its power and its cash flows in the years to come. In the Third World, a means of making valuable assets available to First World creditors and investors at fire sale prices in a situation of virtual state bankruptcy.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Beyond Hypocrisy, 1992, Doublespeak Dictionary (within Beyond Hypocrisy), p. 166.

Beverly Sills photo

“In youth, we run into difficulties. In old age, difficulties run into us.”

Beverly Sills (1929–2007) opera soprano

Josh Billings, as quoted in Mac's Giant Book of Quips and Quotes (1983) by E. C. McKenzie
Misattributed

Murray N. Rothbard photo

“It is the state that is robbing all classes, rich and poor, black and white alike; it is the state that is ripping us all off; it is the state that is the common enemy of mankind.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Murray Rothbard, “The Noblest Cause of All,” Address to the Libertarian Party Convention (1977), Lewrockwell.com https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/the-noblest-cause-of-all/

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Source: The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), p. 120 The Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. 3 (1892)

Milan Kundera photo

“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight

Timothy Geithner photo

“We believe in a strong dollar … Chinese financial assets are very safe.”

Timothy Geithner (1961) American central banker and politician

Peking University, May 31, 2009 http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINPEK12423320090601?rpc=44

“Most great financial innovators come from humble circumstances - nothing arouses fascination with financial assets quite like their absence.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 3, The Market Is Smarter Than You Are, p. 76.

“It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.”

Muriel Spark book The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Source: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Walter de la Mare photo

“A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

Silver.

Mikhail Gorbachev photo

“There is a growing will to achieve consensus, and a growing understanding that we have a State, a country, a common life. This is what must be preserved first of all.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nobel Address (1991)
Context: After a time of rampant separatism and euphoria, when almost every village proclaimed sovereignty, a centripetal force is beginning to gather momentum, based on a more sensible view of existing realities and the risks involved. And this is what counts most now. There is a growing will to achieve consensus, and a growing understanding that we have a State, a country, a common life. This is what must be preserved first of all.

Related topics