"Credit is the economic judgement on the morality of a man. In credit, man himself, instead of metal or paper, has become the mediator of exchange but not as a man, but as the existence of capital and interest. Human individuality, human morality, has itself become both an article of commerce and the form in which money exists. Instead of money, paper is my own personal being, my flesh and blood, my social value and status, the material body of the spirit of money."
- Karl Marx: Paris Manuscripts
as quoted by David McLellan in "Karl Marx, his life and thought" p.113
