“[A banker is] a man who will lend you money if you can prove to him that you don't need it.”
Quoted by Leonard Lyons in his column https://secure.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/151726578.html, 15 October 1944
"Bankers Are Just Like Anybody Else, Except Richer"
I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938)
Context: Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it.
“[A banker is] a man who will lend you money if you can prove to him that you don't need it.”
Quoted by Leonard Lyons in his column https://secure.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/151726578.html, 15 October 1944
Labour's Tom Watson: EU free movement rules must change https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36523759 BBC News (14 June 2016)
2016
“A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.”
In response to whether Anathem "reflects today's culture or politics," from an interview published Sept. 22, 2008 by MIT News http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/stephenson-qa-0922.html
Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 3 : Of Their Magistrates
Context: One rule observed in their council is, never to debate a thing on the same day in which it is first proposed; for that is always referred to the next meeting, that so men may not rashly and in the heat of discourse engage themselves too soon, which might bias them so much that, instead of consulting the good of the public, they might rather study to support their first opinions, and by a perverse and preposterous sort of shame hazard their country rather than endanger their own reputation, or venture the being suspected to have wanted foresight in the expedients that they at first proposed; and therefore, to prevent this, they take care that they may rather be deliberate than sudden in their motions.
According to R. Ken Rasmussen in The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), this is most probably not Twain's.
Misattributed
“The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.”