Quotes about bankruptcy

A collection of quotes on the topic of bankruptcy, world, use, state.

Quotes about bankruptcy

Manly P. Hall photo

“The great materialistic progress which we have venerated for so long is on the verge of bankruptcy.”

Manly P. Hall (1901–1990) Canadian writer and mystic

Preface to the Diamond Jubilee Edition of The Secret Teachings of All Ages
The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928)
Context: The great materialistic progress which we have venerated for so long is on the verge of bankruptcy. We can no longer believe that we are born into this world to accumulate wealth and abandon ourselves to mortal pleasures. We see the dangers and realize that we have been exploited for centuries. We were told the twentieth century was the most progressive that the world has ever known, but unfortunately the progression was in the direction of self-destruction.

Eric Hoffer photo
Theodor W. Adorno photo

“By abstaining from all definite content, whether as formal logic and theory of science or as the legend of Being beyond all beings, philosophy declared its bankruptcy regarding concrete social goals.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 6

Karl Marx photo

“Owners of capital will stimulate working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks which will have to be nationalized and State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Said to be a quote from Das Kapital in an anonymous email, this attribution has been debunked at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/consumerdebt.asp with the earliest occurrence found being a post by Gpkkid on 23 December 2008 http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/do-bailouts-encourage-ponzi-schemes/#comment-24005; it was used as a basis of a satirical article "Americans to Undergo Preschool Reeducation in Advance of Country’s Conversion to Communism" at NewsMutiny http://www.newsmutiny.com/pages/Communist_Reeducation.html, but the author of article on the satiric website says that he is not author of the quote http://www.clockbackward.com/2009/02/04/did-karl-marx-predict-financial-collapse/
Misattributed

Margaret Thatcher photo
Jeffrey Eugenides photo
Dan Barker photo
Woody Allen photo

“His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
Adam Smith photo
Ron Paul photo

“Question: You wanna gut that safety net…
Ron Paul: But the safety net doesn't work.
Question: Tell me why it doesn't work.
Ron Paul: It does work for some people, but overall it ultimately fails, because you spend more money than you have, and then you borrow to the hilt. Now we have to borrow $800 billion a year just to keep the safety net going. It's going to collapse when the dollar collapses, you can't even fight the war without this borrowing. And when the dollar collapses, you can't take care of the elderly of today. They're losing ground. Their cost of living is going up about 10%, even though the government denies it, we give them a 2% cost of living increase.
Question: So do you think the gold standard would fix that?
Ron Paul: The gold standard would keep you from printing money and destroying the middle class. Every country where you have runaway inflation, there's no middle class. Mexico, there's no middle class, you have a huge poor class, and a lot of wealthy people. Today we have a growing poor class, and we have more billionaires than ever before. So we're moving into third world status…
Question: Who is the safety net that you're speaking of, who does benefit from all those programs and all those agencies?
Ron Paul: Everybody on a short term benefits for a time. If you build a tenement house by the government, for about 15 or 20 years somebody might live there, but you don't measure who paid for it: somebody lost their job down the road, somebody had inflation, somebody else suffered. But then the tenement house falls down after about 20 years because it's not privately owned, so everybody eventually suffers. But the immediate victims aren't identifiable, because you don't know who lost the job, and who had the inflation, the victims are invisible. The few people who benefit, who get some help from government, everyone sees, "oh! look what we did!", but they never say instead of what, what did we lose. And unless you ask that question, we'll go into bankruptcy, we're in the early stages of it, the dollar is going down, our standard of living is going down, and we're hurting the very people that so many people wanna help, especially the liberals…”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Mac McKoy on KWQW, December 17, 2007 http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lxo9WIR6w
2000s, 2006-2009

Washington Irving photo
Max Weber photo

“This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history methodology and abandoned once and for all. A fully unconstrained compulsion to acquire goods cannot be understood as synonymous with capitalism, and even less as its “spirit.” On the contrary, capitalism can be identical with the taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering. Nonetheless, capitalism is distinguished by the striving for profit, indeed, profit is pursued in a rational, continuous manner in companies and firms, and then pursued again and again, as is profitability. There are no choices. If the entire economy is organized according to the rules of the open market, any company that fails to orient its activities toward the chance of attaining profit is condemned to bankruptcy.
Let us begin by defining terms in a manner more precise than often occurs. For us, a "capitalist" economic act involves first of all an expectation of profit based on the utilization of opportunities for exchange; that is of (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Formal and actual acquisition through violence follows its own special laws and hence should best be placed, as much as one may recommend doing so, in a different category. Wherever capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, action is oriented to calculation in terms of capital. What does this mean?”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920)

“Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell.”

Kyle Bass (1969) businessperson

BBC HARDTalk interview, 15 November 2011.

Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Frank Borman photo

“Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.”

Frank Borman (1928) NASA astronaut

The Growing Bankruptcy Brigade, TIME magazine (18 October 1982) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,949605,00.html

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Whenever racial discrimination exists it is a tragic expression of man’s spiritual degeneracy and moral bankruptcy. Therefore, it must be removed not merely because it is diplomatically expedient, but because it is morally compelling.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)

Adam Smith photo

“Taking out a commission of bankruptcy is a well-known mode of recovering a debt.”

Sir John Bayley, 1st Baronet (1763–1841) British judge

Guthrie v. Fisk (1824), 3 B & C. 183.

Ron Paul photo
George Bernard Shaw photo
Sung-Yoon Lee photo

“Since the Kim regime is governed by the need to dominate South Korea by threatening the region with nuclear annihilation, its willingness to use its lethal powers will only grow unless it is confronted by the specter of bankruptcy and the consequent destabilization of its rule.”

Sung-Yoon Lee Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

Why Do We Appease North Korea?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/opinion/why-do-we-appease-north-korea.html
The New York Times
May 17, 2017
February 2, 2018
https://web.archive.org/web/20180105180511/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/opinion/why-do-we-appease-north-korea.html
2018-01-05
no

Mitt Romney photo
Tony Benn photo

“We have been in recess since July, and during that time there have been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the Euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in the House of Commons (23 October 2000) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/2000/oct/23/election-of-speaker, cited in Adam Tomkins, "What is Parliament for?" in Bamforth N. and Leyland P. (eds.), Public Law in a Multi-Layered Constitution, Oxford, Hart, 2003, p. 53.
2000s

“I had no idea bankruptcy could be so exciting.”

Pamela Jones Computer law scholar

Hearing Agenda and Novell Asks for All Notices http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071003174654588, retrieved 4 October 2007.

Hillary Clinton photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo

“The highest triumph of Bismarckian politics carried its downfall and bankruptcy within it.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Mark Steyn photo
Edward Heath photo

“It is well to recall that in 112 years of major league baseball, there has been only one bankruptcy filing.”

Andrew Zimbalist (1947) American economist

Source: Baseball And Billions - Updated edition - (1992), Chapter 3, Franchise Finances, p. 72.

Ben Bernanke photo
Dennis Kucinich photo

“Almost half of the bankruptcies in the United States are connected to an illness in the family, whether people had health insurance or not. Middle-class Americans, who had the misfortune of either experiencing a medical emergency themselves or watching a family member suffer, were then forced to face the daunting task of pulling themselves out of debt. Bankruptcy law has allowed them to start over. It has given hope. Now this new law will put people on their own. Illness or emergency creates medical bills. We are telling the people that they themselves are to blame. At the same time, we are removing protections that would stay an eviction, that would keep a roof over the head of a working family. We allow the credit industry to trick consumers into using subprime cards, with exorbitant interest rate hikes and fees. Then we hand those same consumers over to an unforgiving prison of debt, to be put on a rack of insolvency and squeezed dry by the credit card industry. We are protecting the profits of the credit card industry instead of protecting the economic future of the American people. Americans are left on their own. That's what this Administration's "Ownership Society" is all about — you're on your own — and your ship is sinking.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (14 April, 2005) http://frwebgate5.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=240761331899+3+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

David Dinkins photo

“Today, certain people file for bankruptcy, businesses and individuals, and it no longer has the stigma it once had. Now it's almost considered wise, a way to regroup and come back again.”

David Dinkins (1927) former mayor of New York City

On The Fiscal Crisis Of The 1970s. Quoted in an interview by PBS http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/series/interview/dinkins.html

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
John Updike photo
African Spir photo
Heather Brooke photo
Gabrielle Roy photo
Mike Tyson photo
Victor Hugo photo
Maurice de Vlaminck photo
Rahm Emanuel photo
Osama bin Laden photo
Lyndon LaRouche photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Yanis Varoufakis photo

“Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders … What we’ve been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that has turned this nation into a debt colony.”

Yanis Varoufakis (1961) Greek-Australian political economist and author, Greek finance minister

Source: Russell Hotten. " Yanis Varoufakis: In his own words http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31111905" at bbc.co.uk, 3 February 2015; On the austerity terms of Greece's €240bn bailout

Theodor Mommsen photo

“Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor for the moment; he did what as legislator he could, permanently to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital. First of all the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man, of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone, not the debtor. It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legislation, especially that of Solon,(68) introduced this principle--diametrically opposed to the maxims of the earlier ordinances as to bankruptcy-- into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed. According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf of his creditor.(69) The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed a debtor, who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments, not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom by the cession of his property;(70) nevertheless for the really insolvent that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points, had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years; a direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally, when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights or could not be found. It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent the right--on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based-- of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether it might suffice to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin a new financial existence, in which he could only be sued on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected in the liquidation, if he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Restriction on 'usury' or restrictions on the laws in relation to the collection of interest
Vol. 4, pt. 2, translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Paul Mason (journalist) photo
Mitt Romney photo
Merle Haggard photo

“I've lived through 17 stays in penal institutions. Incarceration in a penitentiary. Five marriages, a bankruptcy, a broken back, brawls, shooting incidents, swindlings, sickness, the death of loved ones and more. I've heard tens of thousands chant my name when I couldn't hear the voice of my own soul. I wondered if God was listening and I was sure no one else was.”

Merle Haggard (1937–2016) American country music song writer, singer and musician

Sing Me Back Home (1981), co-written with Peggy Russell; also quoted in "Country Legend Merle Haggard Dies At 79" at NPR (6 April 2016) http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/04/06/473260432/country-legend-merle-haggard-dies-at-79

John Byrne photo

“As I have said many times, I don’t care if they wipe away every trace of every book I have ever worked on. I just wish they’d stop doing so by pressing the “rewind” button. That’s just creative bankruptcy.”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

2005
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=18193
On taking comics back to the basics; ‘rewinding’ or ‘resetting’ to the status quo

Manly P. Hall photo

“To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients.”

Manly P. Hall (1901–1990) Canadian writer and mystic

Preface to the Diamond Jubilee Edition of The Secret Teachings of All Ages
The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928)
Context: To avoid a future of war, crime, and bankruptcy, the individual must begin to plan his own destiny, and the best source for the necessary information comes down to us through the writings of the ancients. The greatest knowledge of all time should be available … in a book that would be a monument, not merely a coffin.

William Faulkner photo
Harold Wilson photo
Annie Besant photo