Debt is part of the human condition. Civilization is based on exchanges – on gifts, trades, loans – and the revenges and insults that come when they are not paid back.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.

Credit is a system whereby a person who can not pay gets another person who can not pay to guarantee that he can pay.

Debt is a trap, especially student debt, which is enormous, far larger than credit card debt. It’s a trap for the rest of your life because the laws are designed so that you can’t get out of it. If a business, say, gets in too much debt, it can declare bankruptcy, but individuals can almost never be relieved of student debt through bankruptcy.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

If you lose a big fight, it will worry you all of your life. It will plague you – until you get your revenge.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.

The only big things I’ve purchased are my dad’s heart valve and a Rolls-Royce for my parents, for their anniversary. And that was only because my dad had a Lady Gaga license plate on our old car and it was making me crazy because he was getting followed everywhere, so I bought him a new car.

I have a scheme for stopping war. It’s this – no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one.

We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

I think God’s going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Bad debt is debt that makes you poorer. I count the mortgage on my home as bad debt, because I’m the one paying on it. Other forms of bad debt are car payments, credit card balances, or other consumer loans.

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.

I like gifts. I like to give them and I like to get them.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

Revenge, lust, ambition, pride, and self-will are too often exalted as the gods of man’s idolatry; while holiness, peace, contentment, and humility are viewed as unworthy of a serious thought.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

We get paid for bringing value to the market place.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

I agree with Balzac and 19th-century writers, black and white, who say, ‚I write for money.‘ Yes, I think everybody should be paid handsomely; I insist on it, and I pay people who work for me, or with me, handsomely.

I ordered each man to be presented with something, as strings of ten or a dozen glass beads apiece, and thongs of leather, all which they estimated highly; those which came on board I directed should be fed with molasses.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

Some of our earliest writing, in cuneiform, was about who owes what.

Players now have a groin injury for months and months, and I often think they don’t really give a toss whether they’re playing or not because they’re getting paid anyway.

My recollection is – and I’d have to confirm this – but I don’t recall paying any money to go to law school.

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

I performed in a bowling alley before while people were still bowling. Cut the check, and I will perform anywhere.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact.

You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.

In Europe first and now in America, elected men have taken it upon themselves to indebt their people to create an atmosphere of dependency. And why? For their own selfish need to increase their own personal power.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.