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.

I declared bankruptcy, and that was the worst thing I ever should have done.

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

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

I used to have insecurity about my finances, then I announced that I had debt, and now I don’t have any insecurities.

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 still have my first paycheck. It was just, I think, a dollar or two that I got when I started as a songwriter with BMI, and I had some songs there that I had through the company, and in the mail I got this big old check for, like, a dollar and a half or something. Somebody had recorded one of my songs.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

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

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

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

I don’t talk trash often, but when I do, I go for the jugular.

We get paid for bringing value to the market place.

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.

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.

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

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.

It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the cut-throats are born to be hanged.

Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror, we must not waver.

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.

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

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

You can’t buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

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.

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.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

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.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

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

My doctor told me I shouldn’t work out until I’m in better shape. I told him, ‚All right; don’t send me a bill until I pay you.‘

I’ve been waiting over 40 years to come to Cyprus, and it has not disappointed – the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Crossroads of Civilization, and, I might add, a genuine strategic partner to the United States of America.

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green.

I believe that God has put gifts and talents and ability on the inside of every one of us. When you develop that and you believe in yourself and you believe that you’re a person of influence and a person of purpose, I believe you can rise up out of any situation.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.

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

Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.

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

Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC’s military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

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.

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

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

A person who can’t pay gets another person who can’t pay to guarantee that he can pay. Like a person with two wooden legs getting another person with two wooden legs to guarantee that he has got two natural legs. It don’t make either of them able to do a walking-match.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

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.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

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.

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