These national debt quotes will inspire you. The national debt, the total amount of money that a country’s government has borrowed, by various means.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging national debt quotes, national debt sayings, and national debt proverbs.
Best National Debt Quotes
- “Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.” ~ Herbert Hoover
- “A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.” ~ Alexander Hamilton
- “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.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“Never spend your money before you have earned it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I, therefore, intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt.” ~ Barack Obama
- “The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents – number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome – so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That’s] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” ~ Barack Obama
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“We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “I found this national debt doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.” ~ Barack Obama
- “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.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “A responsible government does not triple the national debt in eight years.” ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan
- “We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to prevent their growth in our own.” ~ John Adams
- “Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.” ~ William Cobbett
- “..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.” ~ George Washington
- “Consider in Washington, around the country today we are talking about balanced budgets, paying down our national debt, getting the economy going, defending ourselves, activist judges. Newt Gingrich did all those things when he was speaker. We got tax relief. We got balanced budgets. We got, you know, job creation. We paid down our national debt.” ~ J. C. Watts
- “I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.” ~ Alan Greenspan
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“Mr. Obama denounced the $2.3 trillion added to the national debt on Mr. Bush’s watch as ‘deficits as far as the eye can see.’ But Mr. Obama’s budget adds $9.3 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. What happened to Obama the deficit hawk?” ~ Karl Rove
- “We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.” ~ John Spratt
- “I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse and in a republican government more than in any other.” ~ James Madison
- “Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation. If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“I would vote against raising the national debt ceiling. Again, this is about mortgaging the future of unborn generations of Americans. It’s a form of taxation without representation. I don’t think we can do that.” ~ Mike Lee
- “Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.” ~ Barack Obama
- “People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.” ~ Taylor Caldwell
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“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit.” ~ George Washington
- “It is of the greatest consequence that the debt should, with the consent of the creditors, be remolded into such a shape as will bring the expenditure of the nation to a level with its income. Till this shall be accomplished, the finances of the United States will never wear a proper countenance. Arrears of interest, continually accruing, will be as continual a monument, either of inability or of ill faith and will not cease to have an evil influence on public credit.” ~ Alexander Hamilton
- “If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, we should remember also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it” ~ George Washington
- “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.”” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.” ~ Taylor Caldwell
- “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
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“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.” ~ George Washington
- “Our nation stands at the crossroads of liberty. Crushing national debt, rampant illegal immigration, insane business regulations and staggering national unemployment are pushing our nation into unchartered territory.” ~ James Lankford
- “It is a well-known fact that in countries in which the national debt is properly funded, and an object of established confidence, it answers most of the purposes of money. Transfers of stock, or public debt, are there equivalent to payments in species; or, in other words, stock, in the principal transactions of business, passes current as species. The same thing would, in all probability, happen here, under the like circumstances.” ~ Alexander Hamilton
- “The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continues the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.” ~ Thomas Paine
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“A national debt if it is not excessive will be to us a national blessing; it will be powerful cement of our union. It will also create a necessity for keeping up taxation to a degree which without being oppressive, will be a spur to industry.” ~ Alexander Hamilton
- “At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about “a public debt being a public blessing”; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “When I was a youngster growing up in South Dakota, we never referred to the national debt, it was always referred to as the war debt because it stemmed from World War I.” ~ George McGovern
- “Back in 2008, candidate Obama called a $10 trillion national debt ‘unpatriotic’ – serious talk from what looked to be a serious reformer. Yet by his own decisions, President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined. One president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt.” ~ Paul Ryan
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“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.” ~ Thomas Paine
- “It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralise the long-range effects of our national stupidity” ~ Frank Zappa
- “Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.” ~ Karl Rove
- “Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, “If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?”” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Every person born in the USA is endowed with life, liberty, and a substantial share of the national debt.” ~ Francis Bacon
- “Bless the children, for the national debt is theirs.” ~ Herbert Hoover
- “All taxes are a drag on economic growth. It’s only a question of degree.” ~ Alan Greenspan
- “The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.” ~ Barry Goldwater
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“The problem isn’t a Congress that won’t cut spending or a president who won’t raise taxes. The problem is an American public with a bottomless sense of entitlement to federal money.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
- “The current tax code is a daily mugging.” ~ Ronald Reagan
- “The blame for [the national debt]
lies with the Congress and the President,
with Democrats and Republicans alike,
most all of whom have been unwilling
to make the hard choices or
to explain to the American people that
there is no such thing as a free lunch.” ~ Warren Rudman - “That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt. Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 – that is what it amounts to, with interest.” ~ Thomas A. Edison
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“I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “We may casually talk of all sorts of new programs and ‘stimulus,’ but the vast trillion-dollar collective national debt and rising annual deficits will insidiously hamstring almost everything we plan to do.” ~ Victor Davis Hanson
- “In 1950, American families sent 1 of 50 of their hard earned dollars to Washington: Today it is 1 in 4.” ~ John Ensign
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“Read my lips-NO NEW TAXES!” ~ George H. W. Bush
- “Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.” ~ Andrew Jackson
- “We are not taught to fear our politicians, who can debase our currency, throw us in prison and send us to war – but rather we are taught to fear each other. We are taught to imagine that the real predators in this world are not those who control prison cells, national debts and nuclear weapons, but rather our fellow citizens, who in the absence of brutal control would surely tear us apart!” ~ Stefan Molyneux
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“It [1991 Federal budget] contains almost 190,000 accounts. At a rate of one per minute, eight hours a day, it would take over a year to reflect upon these!” ~ Richard Darman
- “Obviously, there has to be a profound change in direction. Otherwise, interest on the national debt will start eating up virtually every penny that we have.” ~ Bobby Scott
- “The tax code is a monstrosity and there’s only one thing to do with it. Scrap it, kill it, drive a stake through its heart, bury it and hope it never rises again to terrorize the American people.” ~ Steve Forbes
- “What our Republican friends are doing, if we look at what they do and not what they say, they have decided that the most important thing in this country is to increase payments for interest on the national debt.” ~ Tom Allen
- “It is a law of governance that democracies have to spend themselves dizzy. Citizens of democracies can, after all, tell their government to give them things.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
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“If we do our deficit spending on weapons, at least we get weapons. Then if we need weapons, we have them. If we don’t need them, no harm is done.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
- “Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise…. It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.” ~ Mo Udall
- “Big banks churn out page after page of incomprehensible fine print to obscure the cost and risks of checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages and other financial products. The result is that consumers can’t make direct product comparisons, markets aren’t competitive, and costs are higher. If the playing field is leveled and the broken market fixed, a lot more money will stay in the pockets of millions of hard-working families. That’s real stimulus – money to families, without increasing our national debt.” ~ Elizabeth Warren
