A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don't need it.

Bob Hope (1903–2003) was a major American comedian whose one-liners often skewered everyday institutions—especially money, business, and modern “common sense.” This quip belongs to a long tradition of jokes about the paradox of credit: formal lending systems tend to favor borrowers who already have assets, stable income, and collateral, while those in genuine need face the highest barriers. Hope’s public persona—wry, fast, and topical—made such observations feel like casual humor while also reflecting mid‑20th‑century anxieties about banks, consumer debt, and financial respectability. The line is frequently repeated in collections of Hope’s jokes and in general quotation anthologies.

The joke turns on an irony: the people who “need” a loan most are least likely to qualify, because banks lend based on evidence of low risk rather than need. By defining a bank as a place that lends only when you can prove you don’t need the money, the quote satirizes how financial institutions prioritize security, collateral, and creditworthiness over human necessity. It also hints at a broader social critique—wealth and stability compound themselves, while precarity is punished. The humor works because it compresses a complex economic reality into a simple reversal, making the system’s logic sound absurd even as it remains recognizable.