Top 55 Austerity Quotes

Deficits must be cut, yes, but the rush to austerity risks undermining the fragile global recovery.

I came from a lower-middle-class postwar family in a time of austerity and retrenchment, with no one in the family who was in any way artistic or a potential mentor to a budding writer, and yet this is what I became.

For decades, life expectancy steadily rose in Britain: and then, suddenly, just as the Tories took power and imposed austerity, this improvement ground to a halt.

Especially in these times of austerity and the world feels like it’s falling apart, it’s good for people to have a laugh.

It is opposition to economic orthodoxy that leads us into austerity and cuts. But it is also a thirst for something more communal, more participative. That, to me, is what is interesting in this process.

One of the things that happens when you have austerity is that wages get lower, and some people think lower wages in the short run can increase corporate profits.

Europe’s younger generation has only experienced austerity.

Italians have always had a high savings rate. They love putting their money into their own government bonds – even more than in houses, stocks and gold. The higher rates climb, the happier they are to invest. So if austerity plans drive rates up, it’s music to Italian ears.

The task ahead of us will be extremely challenging as the Tory party continue with their austerity agenda and as we continue to resolve the issues of the past and build unity, reconciliation, and equality.

A beautiful deleveraging balances the three options. In other words, there is a certain amount of austerity, there is a certain amount of debt restructuring, and there is a certain amount of printing of money. When done in the right mix, it isn’t dramatic.

This government and the party that I lead will continue to argue an alternative to the Tory-Labour austerity.

Austerity need not be Europe’s fate.

But the fact that we had to devalue by 40% at once means that Malawians are feeling the shock, the impact of that huge devaluation and particularly rural people, the poor are the ones that are going to be most affected. That is why there is the austerity plan.

Schools unable to keep their lights on and their doors open for the full working week is just the latest bleak instalment of a long-running show. The age of austerity returns for its ninth miserable year; always in the background, the common denominator in everything from the Brexit vote to knife crime.

Never has a strong, responsible trade union movement been so needed. With austerity policies biting hard and with no evidence that they are working, people at work need the TUC to speak up for them now more than ever.

In the U.S. the powerful critics of austerity such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich rightly identify the decline of ‘labor’ as a problem, and renewing trade unionism part of the solution. Our opportunity is to make the same case in the UK.

Instead of an end to austerity, Labour has made clear that it wants to impose more austerity cuts.

Past experience with fiscal austerity at home and overseas strongly suggests that it is best for the economy’s long-run performance to restrain government spending rather than raise taxes.

It is time to recognise that austerity alone condemns not just Greece but the whole of Europe to the probability of a painful and protracted era of little or no economic growth. This would be a tragedy not just for Greece and for Europe, but for the world.

As a Scandinavian, I like hopelessness and the weird austerity in the hopelessness of things.

Our problem in the 2015 general election was that for all the good stuff that was in the Labour manifesto, we were still going to be freezing public sector wages, cutting council expenditure, laying off civil servants. We were offering ‘austerity light’ instead of a real alternative.

People are increasingly frustrated that decisions taken further and further away from them mean their living standards are slashed through enforced austerity or their taxes are used to bail out governments on the other side of the continent.

Discovering how to spend leisure time well, especially during a time of austerity, could be as important in the effort to reduce crime as having extra police on the streets, and increasing the population of concert halls may actually help decrease the population of prisons.

Food is a weapon in austerity Britain. Hunger, the threat of and the reality of, is used to coerce and control.

Austerity is literally a matter of life and death. Unless it is stopped, lives will continue to be unnecessarily shortened.

Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.

Austerity is not part of the European treaties; democracy and the principle of popular sovereignty are.

The Conservative party now exists largely to misinform the public, to convince voters struggling through austerity that they have the same interests as billionaires and corporations.

Until people realise benefits doesn’t mean scrounger, and austerity isn’t a fun middle-class way to grow your own vegetables, there’s still a lot of work to do.

Profitability is coming from productivity, efficiency, management, austerity, and the way to manage the business.

Systematic social and environmental deregulation, and the economics of austerity while enriching the rich, will be the markers of Farage/Tory politics after Brexit. Singapore-on-Sea for the rich; degradation for the rest.

European officials thought that austerity was part of what they called their ‘convergence policies,’ of trying to bring countries together. Instead, it actually made things worse. There’s more inequality within countries and more disparity across countries.

When we see the banks get bailed out with seemingly no consequences while ordinary people pay the price with job and wage cuts through austerity measures, who could blame a person for wondering where the loyalties of their elected leaders really lie?

If the ‘Athens Spring’ – when the Greek people courageously rejected the catastrophic austerity conditions of the previous bailouts – has one lesson to teach, it is that Greece will recover only when the European Union makes the transition from ‘We the states’ to ‘We the European people.’

The TUC’s new slogan ‘a future that works’ sets a profound challenge. Austerity and rapid deficit reduction is failing in its own terms, but even at its best it is short-sighted, muddle-through politics with no vision of a new economic model.

America should do more to fix the still-festering housing crisis and overhaul its training schemes so that high joblessness does not become entrenched. Hunkering down for austerity is not enough. The rich world needs a strategy for growth.

The more we can do to address fiscal austerity, the better our markets will do, and there is a real political shift to doing that.

I grew up in austerity in the 1940s and 1950s.

In difficult economic times, I’m firmly opposed to austerity.

I believe that if we are able to, obviously we need to ensure that we have a robust budget that’s balanced, but there’s no way I would ever accept austerity.

In the face of postwar austerity, hundreds of brides-to-be across the country sent Princess Elizabeth their clothing coupons so that she could have the dress of their dreams.

The idea of the mystic solo, meditating away on his own, is only one path of yoga. Very early on, I chose the path of Life. One path is austerity and isolation, the other is Life. But they both lead to the same place.

Sinn Fein will not do Tory austerity.

If we want to end austerity, if we want to protect jobs and livelihoods and if we want to hold multinational corporations to account, then we need to stay in the single market.

Austerity hasn’t just decimated our public services. It has corroded the political imagination.

Austerity is, devastatingly, not a party political issue.

The consumption of petroleum should be conserved. We need to adopt some austerity measures. The people should cooperate with us.

The emphasis so far on fiscal austerity, while to a degree necessary for the countries facing market funding difficulties, is excessive when carried out across the board.

Austerity has led us to a terrible philosophy where we think we’ve got to cut back on everything that’s ‘frippery’, like the arts.

Neoliberalism is hard to define. It could refer to intensified resource extraction, financialization, austerity, or something more ephemeral – a way of life – in which collective ideals of citizenship give way to marketized individualism and consumerism.

Pope Francis has stressed humility and austerity – a far cry, according to many, from the predecessor’s bling and Ferragamo shoes – those were pretty entertaining. And he’s translating all of that into a policy agenda.

Every austerity measure that Cameron and George Osborne make is being presented in Scotland as the English starving us.

First of all, I don’t like to speak about austerity. I’d prefer to speak of fiscal discipline. Fiscal discipline, in the end, amounts to austerity if it is not accompanied by other policies.