“The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should betempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands shouldbe curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. 55 B.C.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
“I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.”
Thomas Jefferson
“You cannot spend your way out of a recession or borrow your way out of debt... You know and we know and you know that we know that it's nonsense... The European Commission has said so. The markets say so, ... In a few months, the voters will have their chance to say so, too. They can see what the markets have seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government"”
Daniel Hannan
“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other”
James Madison
“Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people”
Wendell Phillips
“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
“Mr. President, that whimsical English professor, Dr. Parkinson, should formulate another Parkinson's law relating to the public debt since it so closely parallels his law on bureaucratic growth. Just as spending will always reach and overtake revenues so the public debt will constantly pierce the ceiling and finally go into orbit.”
Everett Dirksen
