History of Debt
See also: History of moneyDebt is as old as economy. The anthropologist David Graeber argues in Debt: The First 5000 Years that trade starts with some sort of credit namely the promise to pay later for already handed over goods. Therefore credit and debt existed even before coins.
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Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or debt:
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (17491832)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of actionthat the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834)
“They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They put off the day of settlement, and meanwhile the debt accumulates.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)