“A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it”

Entry in progress—B.P.
 

Google Books
The Yale Book of Quotations
Edited by Fred R. Shapiro
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
2006
Pg. 369:
Bob Hope (Leslie Townes Hope)
English-born U.S. comedian, 1903-2003
“A bank is a place tha will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.”
Quoted in Alan Harrington, Life in the Crystal Palace (1959). Although this line is associated with Hope, the Washington Pose, 16 Oct. 1944, quotes comedian Joe E. Lewis saying “[A banker is] a man who will lend you money if you can prove to him that you don’t need it.”
     
2 December 1935, Clovis (NM) Evening News-Journal, “Jabs, Sante Fe New Mexican,” pg. 2, col. 2:
Santa Fe Sam says a bank is an institution where you can borrow money if you can present sufficient evidence to show that you don’t need it.
 
Google Books
August 1937, The Eggsaminer, pg. 10, col. 3:
Definition
BANK: An institution where you can borrow money if you present sufficient evidence to prove that you don’t need it.
 
14 June 1944, Portsmouth (NH) Herald, “News and Nutty Gags—Heard At Peavey’s,” pg. 8, col. 1:
A bank is an institution where you can borrow money if you can present sufficient evidence to show that you don’t need it.
     
Google Books
The Joker Is Wild;
The story of Joe E. Lewis

By Art Cohn
New York, NY: Random House
1955
Pg. 198:
“Mr. Morgan is my banker. A banker is a man who will loan you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.” Joe grinned.
 
2 December 1968, Galveston (TX) Daily News, “Earl’s Pearls” by Earl Wilson, pg. 2A, col. 4:
REMEMBERED QUOTE: “A bank is an institution where you can borrow money if you can present sufficient evidence that you don’t need it.”