Business economics
"Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is reality."
Unknown origin
"I hope at least, when I work out debit and credit
and compare my good deeds with my evil doings,
to show a solvent liquidation."
Ludvig Holberg 1684 - 1754
"An economist is a person who speaks about something,
he doesn't understand and makes you feel an idiot."
Herbert Prochnow
Double-entry bookkeeping
"Book-keeping is a history of values."
"Debit and credit mean simply "left hand side" and "right hand side" of the equation.
To him who understands the equation, no other definition of debit and credit is necessary.
To him who has never grasped the idea of the equation, no definition of debit and credit can
make them clear."
Charles E. Sprague 1880.
"The Principles of Book-keeping by Double Entry constitute a theory which is mathematically
by no means uninteresting: it is in fact like Euclid's theory of ratios an absolutely perfect one,
and it is only its extreme simplicity which prevents it from being as interesting as it would
otherwise be."
A. Cayley 1894
". . . . baffling peculiarity . . . . that the left side of some accounts is the increase side but in others the increases are entered on the right side . . . . This arrangement is too complicated to make worthwhile an attempt to rationalize it."
A.C. Littleton 1926
"Accounting is a common heritage of mankind, as are the Indo-Arabic numerals it uses."
". . . . despite a tradition of more than 600 years, to this moment a generally accepted explanation for the process of double-entry has not been found."
". . . . To detect this thread of logic which runs through the first completed structure of double-entry in the fourteenth century as it does today, is indeed an unavoidable task of scientific investigation, one of the first problems accountancy must solve. It may be hard work. The many unsatisfactory attempts offer valid proof to its difficulty . . . . "
"But surely the theorists of accountancy will not rest until the mystery which surrounds double-entry bookkeeping is dissipated, so that it is no longer necessary to accept the rules on faith."
"As pointed out by Jackson . . . . in the eyes of most accountants the ultimate goal of a theory of accounts should be the indication of a single bookkeeping rule, universally valid for all accounts and all transactions."
Karl Käfer 1966
". . . . the holy grail of bookkeeping - the single, general rule which is applicable to all transactions."
J.G.C. Jackson 1956
"A general theoretical framework sufficient to support the numerous service mechanisms of accounting is not yet in evidence . . . . "
"Does theory lack not only formulation, but also an optimum form of expression?"
"The previous development suggests that accountancy may be measurably improved by subjecting it to more rigorous analyses expressed in symbolic terms . . . ."
Thomas H. Williams & Charles H. Griffin 1964
Money
"It is bad not to have any money, because people then think you are poor."
Unknown origin