Swindling Quotes

• I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Army, Names

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.277

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• All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!

  Charles Dickens

  Self, Words Of Wisdom, Crowns

  Charles Dickens (1881). “Great Expectations”, p.254

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• Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

  Edmund Burke

  Forgiving, Adultery, Murder

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• It is more dangerous to be a great prophet or poet than to promote twenty companies for swindling simple folk out of their savings.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Simple, Twenties, Saving

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.2927, e-artnow

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• Sex is the one thing you cannot really swindle; and it is the centre of the worst swindling of all, emotional swindling.... Sex lashes out against counterfeit emotion, and is ruthless, devastating against false love.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Sex, Emotional, False Love

  D. H. Lawrence, Michael Squires (2002). “Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'”, p.313, Cambridge University Press

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• The nature of business is swindling.

  August Bebel

  Business

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• Undoubtedly there are, in connection with each of these things, cases of fraud, swindling, and other financial crimes; that is to say, the greed and selfishness of men are perpetual.

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Hype, Greed

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.41, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Autumn, Men, Firsts

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2009). “The Great Crash 1929”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• And let no government imagine, that, to strip them of the power of defrauding their subjects, is to deprive them of a valuable privilege. A system of swindling can never be long lived, and must infallibly in the end produce much more loss than profit.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Loss, Government, Long

  Jean Baptiste Say, Clement Cornell Biddle (1851). “A treatise on political economy”, p.238

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• All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.

  Charles Dickens

  Self, Expectations, Earth

  Charles Dickens (1881). “Great Expectations”, p.254

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• Under private property, each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering.

  Karl Marx

  Selfish, Power, Men

  Karl Marx (2012). “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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• Everything ends this way in France — everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs — everything is a pretext for a good dinner.

  Jean Anouilh

  Paris, Dinner, Way

  Jean Anouilh (1958). “Jean Anouilh”

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• The State always stands for swindling, intrigue, and privilege, and cannot stand for anything else.

  Ignazio Silone

  Privilege, States, Intrigue

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• In practice [monetary management] is merely a high-sounding euphemism for continuous currency debasement. It consists of constant lying in order to support constant swindling. Instead of automatic currencies based on gold, people are forced to take managed currencies based on guile. Instead of precious metals they hold paper promises whose value falls with every bureaucratic whim. And they are suavely assured that only hopelessly antiquated minds dream of returning to truth and honesty and solvency and gold.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Dream, Honesty, Lying

  "What You Should Know about Inflation".

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• Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.

  George Orwell

  War, Struggle, Heart

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944”

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• We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the business man is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices. We will not submit to that kind of prosperity any more than we will submit to prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Men, Practice, Wish

  Address by Theodore Roosevelt Before The Convention Of The National Progressive Party in Chicago, www.ssa.gov. August 1912.

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• Italy is the home of art and swindling; home of religion and moral rottenness

  Mark Twain

  Art, Inspiration, Home

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