Economy Quotes

“The stock market has spoiled more appetites than bad cooking.”

“Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.”

“The truth is we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless.”

“I am a most unhappy man. I accidentally ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. Our government is no longer based on the freedom of opinion, nor on the conviction and the majority decision, it is now a government which is subjected to the conviction and the compulsion of a small group of dominant men.”

“If you got a dollar, soak it away, put it in a savings bank, bury it, do anything but spend it. Spending when we didn't have it put us where we are today. Saving when we've got it will get us back to where we was before we went cuckoo.”

“We are the first nation in the history of the world to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.”

“When you figure it right down, none of us are in a really essential business but the farmer, and he raises so much that even his business is partly non-essential.”

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak'd meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”

“Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.”

“There was a time when corporations played a minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.”

“The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.”

“Land taxes is the thing. They got so high that there is no chance to make anything. Not only land but all property tax. You see in the old days, why the only thing they knew how to tax was land, or a house. Well, that condition went along for quite awhile, so even today the whole country tries to run its revenue on taxes on land. They never ask if the land makes anything. "It's land ain't it? Well tax it then."”

“If this depression stays with us, the loser Tuesday is going to be the winner.”

“Alexander Hamilton originated the put and take system in our national treasury: the taxpayers put it in, and the politicians take it out”

“Like I say, I don't think it'll be done perfectly. Maybe we'll end up with a little bit better [economy] system.”

“The nation is prosperous on the whole, but how much prosperity is there in a hole?”

“Why don't somebody print the truth about our present economic situation? We spent six years of wild buying on credit - everything under the sun, whether we needed it or not - and now we are having to pay for 'em, and we are howling like a pet coon.”

“Rotation of crops and less automobiles will relieve the farmers whenever they decide to try it.”

“Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone's guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.”

“There's nothing inappropriate about having debt in America. It's what helped us grow over time. And it's when debt gets out of control that you worry.”

“The good thing is, we have household formation in this country.”

“We've got more productive capacity now than we ever have.”

“Our financial ills will never be settled till you fix it so every man will pay an income tax on what he earns, be it a farm, grocery store or municipal or government bonds.”

“If we could just go back the last two or three years and do our buying a little more carefully, why... we would be O.K.”

“People want just taxes more than they want lower taxes. They want to know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his wealth.”