Quotes From Earlier Hard Times

"When Sir Isaac Newton was asked about the continuance of the rising of South Sea stock? ---- He answered 'that he could not calculate the madness of people'. – Lord Radnor quoted in Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, 1820, on the first speculative financial bubble of the modern age

“Given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.”—Herbert Hoover, 1928

"We are at the end of our string. There is nothing more we can do." – Herbert Hoover to his secretary, three and a half years after the Great Crash and one day before leaving office

"When beggars and shoeshine boys, barbers and beauticians can tell you how to get rich it is time to remind yourself that there is no more dangerous illusion than the belief that one can get something for nothing." – Financier Bernard Baruch, 1929

"It's a racket. Those stock market guys are crooked." – Al Capone (and he would know from crooked!)

“ ‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked.
‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’”—Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“There’s a lot of nostalgia for the Depression, though obviously by people who didn’t live through it.”—Hilton Kramer, The New York Times, Dec. 26, 1972

“No man with that size misery index [i.e., the combination of inflation and employment] had a right to seek reelection to the Presidency.”—Jimmy Carter on rival Gerald Ford, 1976

“If he wants a definition I’ll give him one. Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery—recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his!”—Ronald Reagan, 1980, responding to Jimmy Carter disputing his claim that the United States was in a “Depression."

“The Days of Wine and Sushi: A Social History of the Eighties: From Boom to ka-Boom!”—Esquire Magazine cover story, February 1988, three and a half months after the Great Crash of 1987

“We can’t go on together
With suspicious minds
And we can’t build our dreams
On suspicious minds.”—Elvis Presley, “Suspicious Minds,” accounting for the American susceptibility to getting rich the easy way