Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition.
Barack Obama (b. 1961) American politician, US President (2009-2017)
Commencement Address, Knox College, Galesburg, IL (4 Jun 2005)
(Source)
Quotations about:
wealth
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
She ate her trifle, reflecting that grinding poverty, though loathsome while one is in it, has the advantage of making one enjoy money in a way denied to the rich-from-birth.
One house upon the Esquiline,
One where patricians dwell,
And hard beside Diana’s shrine
You have a third as well.
You live near mournful Cybele,
You’ve Vesta’s fane in view;
Jove’s ancient temple you can see.
You look upon the new.
With seven dwellings I despair
To find you when I call,
He who has mansions everywhere
Has not a home at all.[Esquiliis domus est, domus est tibi colle Dianae,
Et tua patricius culmina vicus habet;
Hinc viduae Cybeles, illinc sacraria Vestae,
Inde novum, veterem prospicis inde Iovem.
Dic, ubi conveniam, dic, qua te parte requiram:
Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat.]Martial (AD c.39-c.103) Spanish Roman poet, satirist, epigrammatist [Marcus Valerius Martialis]
Epigrams [Epigrammata], Book 7, epigram 73 (7.73) (AD 92) [tr. Pott & Wright (1921)]
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:
Thou has a house on the Aventine hill,
Another where Diana's worshipped still,
In the Patrician street more of them stand,
Hence thou beholdst within thine eyes, command
The widowed Cybells, thence Vesta with all,
There either Jove earth'd in the Capitol.
Where shall I meet thee? tell, where wilt appear?
He dwells just nowhere, that dwells everywhere.
[tr. Fletcher (1656)]
On Esquiline, and on Diana's hill,
Thou hast abodes thou not pretend'st to fill.
But city-sites can ne'er suffice thy state:
Thou far from town must tow'r among the great:
Hence Cybele's, thence Vesta's fane behold;
Here the new Jupiter, and there the old.
Where shall I meet thee? who they mansion tells?
Who e'vrywhere inhabits, nowhere dwells.
[tr. Elphinston (1782), Book 6, Part 1, ep. 10]
You possess a house at Esquiliae, and one on the hill of Diana; and the street of Patricians amongst its roofs reckons yours. From one of your houses you behold the temple of Cybele, from another that of Vesta; you command a view both of the ancient and modern capitol. Say, where shall I meet with you? At what place shall I ask for you? Maximus! he who lives everywhere lives nowhere.
[tr. Amos (1858), ch. 3, ep. 103]
You have a mansion on the Esquiline hill, and a mansion on the hill of Diana; and another rears its head in the Patricians' quarter. From one of your dwellings you behold the temple of the widowed Cybele, from another that of Vesta; from others you look on the old and the new Capitol. Tell me where I may meet you; tell me whereabouts I am to look for you: a man who lives everywhere, Maximus, lives nowhere.
[tr. Bohn's Classical (1859)]
He has no home whose home is all the world.
[ed. Harbottle (1897)]
On the Esquiline you have a house, you have a house on Diana's hill, and the Patrician Street holds a roof of yours; from this you survey the shrine of widowed Cybele, from that the shrine of Vesta; from here the new, from there the ancient temple of Jove. Say where I amy call upon you, say in what quarter I may look for you: he who lives everywhere, Maximus, lives nowhere.
[tr. Ker (1919)]
The Esquiline and Aventine are yours
And the Patrician Street confronts your doors;
Thence widowed Cybele and Vesta's fire
And ancient Jove and modern you admire.
Where shall I meet you, wither, pray, repair?
He has no home who lodges everywhere.
[tr. Francis & Tatum (1924), ep. 372]
That's a fine lace you have on Beacon Hill, Max,
and that unlisted duplex out Huntington Avenue,
and the old homestead in Tewksbury.
From one you can see
the big gilt dome; the second
gives you an uninterrupted ecstatic view
of the Mother Church; the third
commands the County Poorhouse.
And you
invite me to dinner?
There?
There?
Or there?
Max, a man who lives everywhere
lives nowhere.
[tr. Fitts (1967), "... Are Many Mansions"]
You have one home on the Esquiline,
Another on the Aventine,
And from a third one you can see
The shrine of widowed Cybele.
From still another you've a view
Of both the temples, old and new,
Of Jupiter, In fact, a home
Of yours lies everywhere in Rome!
Where can I find you when in town?
At what address can you be found?
He who lives all over Rome
Never can be found at home.
[tr. Marcellino (1968), "A Far-Flung Friend"]
A house on the Esquiline --
and one on the Aventine --
Patricius Street claims another rooftop of yours
over here you have a shrine on the widowed Great Mother
over there is your sacred hearth of Vesta
elsewhere you display a new bust of Jove
elsewhere a bust of Veiovis.
Can you tell me, Maximus,
where to meet you,
where to find you at home?
Someone
who
lives
everywhere
lives
Nowhere.
[tr. Bovie (1970)]
You have a house on the Esquiline, and a house on Diana's hill, and Patrician Row has a roof of yours. From one you view the shrine of bereaved Cybele, from another that of Vesta, and from this Jupiter's new temple, from that the old one. Tell me where I am to meet you, in what quarter to look for you. Who lives everywhere, Maximus, lives nowhere.
[tr. Shackleton Bailey (1993)]
You’ve a house on the Esquiline, house on the Aventine,
and Patrician Street owns a roof of yours too;
add one with a view of poor Cybele’s shrine,
one Vesta’s, one Jupiter’s old, one his new.
Tell me where to meet you, tell me where to find you:
Who lives everywhere, Maximus, lives nowhere at all.
[tr. Kline (2006)]
Birds of the air know
the man with a house everywhere
has a home nowhere.
[tr. Kennelly (2008), "A geography"]
Man has three friends on whose company he relies. First, wealth — which goes with him only while good fortune lasts. Second, his relatives — they go only as far as the grave and leave him there. The third friend, his good deeds, go with him beyond the grave.
The Talmud (AD 200-500) Collection of Jewish rabbinical writings
(Attributed)
I could not find an actual citation for this quotation, but the story (the explanation of a parable, in which a man is summoned before a king, and while his dearest friend will not go with him, and his second best friend will only go to the palace gates, his least-loved friend goes with him before the throne) shows up with different translation in multiple sources:
- The Talmud: Selections, Part 5 "Civil and Criminal Laws -- the Holy Days" - "The Day of Atonement" [tr. Polano (1876)].
- Isaac Aboav, Lamp of Light [Menorat Hamoar] [14th C], Fifth Lamp "Teshuvah," Sec. 2 [ch. 3] in Leonard Kravitz and Kerry Olitzky, <i>Journey of the Soul: Traditional Sources on the</i> Teshuvah (1995).
- Talmudic and Other Legends [tr., comp. Weiss (1888 ed.), "Man's Three Friends" (Pirke R. Eliezer).
Any reasonable system of taxation should be based on the slogan of “Soak the Rich.”
Heywood Broun (1888-1939) American journalist, author
(Attributed)
The urge to distribute wealth equally, and still more the belief that it can be brought about by political action, is the most dangerous of all popular emotions. It is the legitimation of envy, of all the deadly sins the one which a stable society based on consensus should fear the most. The monster state is a source of many evils; but it is, above all, an engine of envy.
Paul Johnson (b. 1928) English journalist, historian, speechwriter, author
The Recovery of Freedom (1980)
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist
The Communist Manifesto (1848) [with Friedrich Engels]
[Capitalism is] the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) English economist
(Attributed)
Attributed by Sir George Schuster, Christianity and Human Relations in Industry (1951). Frequently quoted, but no direct citation found. More information here.
Variations:
- "... the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- "... the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- "The great merit of the capitalist system, it has been said, is that it succeeds in using the nastiest motives of nasty people for the ultimate benefit of society." (written by E. A. G. Robinson, Monopoly (1941). (Robinson was a colleague of Keynes.)
My father deals with millionaires and billionaires on a daily basis, the sort of people who have egos just this side (and sometimes way over the edge) of sociopathy. The sort of person who thinks he’s the apex predator wading through a universe of sheep.
John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
Lock In (2014)
What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. This same tendency, operating with increasing force, is observable in our civilization to-day, showing itself in every progressive community, and with greater intensity the more progressive the community. Wages and interest tend constantly to fall, rent to rise, the rich to become very much richer, the poor to become more helpless and hopeless, and the middle class to be swept away.
Henry George (1839-1897) American economist
Progress and Poverty, “How Modern Civilization May Decline” (1879)
“Rich people show their appreciation through favors,” I said. “When everyone you know has more money than they know what to do with, money stops being a useful transactional tool. So instead you offer favors. Deals. Quid pro quos. Things that involve personal involvement rather than money. Because when you’re that rich, your personal time is your limiting factor.”
John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
Lock In (2014)
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.William J. H. Boetcker (1873-1962) German-American religious leader, author, public speaker [William John Henry Boetcker]
“The Industrial Decalogue” (1916)
Often referred to as "The Ten Cannots," and also often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln.
People say law, but they mean wealth.
It is not merely that the ownership of any substantial share in the national wealth is concentrated to-day in the hands of a few hundred thousand families, and that at the end of an age which began with an affirmation of the rights of property, proprietary rights are, in fact, far from being widely distributed. Nor is it merely that what makes property insecure to-day is not the arbitrary taxation of unconstitutional monarchies or the privileges of an idle noblesse, but the insatiable expansion and aggregation of property itself, which menaces with absorption all property less than the greatest, the small master, the little shopkeeper, the country bank, and has turned the mass of mankind into a proletariat working under the agents and for the profit of those who own.
R. H. Tawney (1880-1962) English writer, economist, historian, social critic [Richard Henry Tawney]
The Acquisitive Century, ch. 5 “Property and Creative Work” (1920)
The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.
George Bancroft (1800-1891) American historian, statesman, education reformer
Speech, Adelphi Society, Liamstown College (Aug 1835)
“Which of them shall be accounted greatest?” Let the churches stop trying to outstrip each other in the number of their adherents, the size of its sanctuary, the abundance of wealth. If we must compete let us compete to see which can move toward the greatest attainment of truth, the greatest service of the poor, and the greatest salvation of the soul and bodies of men. If the Church entered this kind of competition we can imagine what a better world this would be.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“Cooperative Competition / Noble Competition,” sermon outline
(Source)
Money is that dear thing which
if you’re not careful, you can squander
your whole life thinking of …
Mary Jo Salter (b. 1954) American poet, editor, academic
“A Benediction,” part 6, ll. 1-3 (1994)
Convinced that character is all and circumstances nothing, [the Puritan] sees in the poverty of those who fall by the way, not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will.
R. H. Tawney (1880-1962) English writer, economist, historian, social critic [Richard Henry Tawney]
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, ch. 4 (1926)
(Source)
Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character.
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) American lawyer, politician, US President (1925-29)
Foundations of the Republic (1926)
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be —
I had a mother who read to me.Strickland Gillilan (1869-1954) American poet and humorist
“The Reading Mother”
Some men rob you with a six-gun,
Some with a fountain pen.Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie (1912-1967) American singer-songwriter and musician
“Pretty Boy Floyd the Outlaw” (1961)
When people ask, “Why should the rich pay a larger percent of their income than middle-income people?” — my answer is not an answer most people get: It’s because their power developed from laws that enriched them.
Ralph Nader (b. 1934) American attorney, author, lecturer, political activist
“Public Citizen Number One,” by Debra Saunders, San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle (13 Oct 1996)
He who withholds but a pennyworth of worldly goods from his neighbor, knowing him to be in need of it, is a robber in the sight of God.
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1328?) German theologian, philosopher, mystic [a.k.a. Johannes Eckhart von Hochheim; Eckhart; Eckehart]
Meister Eckhart, Tractate 6, “Sister Katrei” [ed. Pfeiffer (1857), tr. Evans]
(Source)
I will enjoy the pleasure of what I give by giving it alive, and seeing another enjoy it. When I die, I should be ashamed to leave enough to build me a monument if there were a wanting friend above ground.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) English poet
Letter to Jonathan Swift (9 Oct 1729)
No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
Life Thoughts: Gathered from the Extemporaneous Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher (1858)
This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
Douglas Adams (1952-2001) English writer
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Introduction (1979)
(Source)
The truest American president we have ever had, the companion of Washington in our love and honor, recognized that the poorest man, however outraged, however ignorant, however despised, however black, was, as a man, his equal. The child of the American people was their most prophetic man, because, whether as small shop-keeper, as flat-boatman, as volunteer captain, as honest lawyer, as defender of the Declaration, as President of the United States, he knew by the profoundest instinct and the widest experience and reflection, that in the most vital faith of this country it is just as honorable for an honest man to curry a horse and black a boot as it is to raise cotton or corn, to sell molasses or cloth, to practice medicine or law, to gamble in stocks or speculate in petroleum. He knew the European doctrine that the king makes the gentleman; but he believed with his whole soul the doctrine, the American doctrine, that worth makes the man.
George William Curtis (1824-1892) American essayist, editor, reformer, orator
“The Good Fight” (1865)
(Source)
Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
“Of Riches,” Essays, No. 34 (1625)
(Source)
I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue; the Roman word is better, “impedimenta;” for as the baggage is to an army, so is riches to virtue; it cannot be spared nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
“Of Riches,” Essays, No. 34 (1625)
(Source)
No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.
William E. Channing (1780-1842) American moralist, author, cleric, Unitarian theologian
“Self Culture,” lecture, Boston (Sep 1838)
What a country wants to make it richer is never consumption, but production. Where there is the latter, we may be sure that there is no want of the former. To produce, implies that the producer desires to consume; why else should he give himself useless labor? He may not wish to consume what he himself produces, but his motive for producing and selling is the desire to buy. Therefore, if the producers generally produce and sell more and more, they certainly also buy more and more.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist
“The Consumer Theory of Prosperity” (1830)
One of the temptations of upper-middle class life is to create sharp edges of our moral sensitivities that allows comfortable confusions about sin and virtue. The difference between rich and poor is not that the rich sin more than the poor, it is that the rich find it easier to call sin a virtue. When the poor sin, they call it sin; when they see holiness, they identify it as such. This intuitive clarity is often absent from the wealthy, and that absence easily leads to the atrophy of the moral sense.
Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) Dutch Catholic priest and writer
Encounters with Merton (2004)
Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist
Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production (1873)
To have money is a feare, not to have it a griefe.
George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 591 (1640 ed.)
(Source)
Riches are a trust. … Power is a trust. So also is genius or every degree of wisdom. … Talents are a trust, too; that is the condition of their increase. They must be put out to use, or they will ruin the steward.
The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
Laurence Sterne (1713-1786) Anglo-Irish novelist, Anglican clergyman
Tristam Shandy, Book 1, ch. 3 (1760-1767)
The history of the Jews also shows that oppression and persecution are far more efficacious in binding a nation together than community of interest and national prosperity. Increase of wealth divides rather than unites a people; but suffering shared in common binds it together with hoops of steel.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“Patriotism,” Outspoken Essays: First Series (1915)
“Money does not bring happiness” — only the wherewithal, perhaps, to endure its absence.
Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941) American feminist, journalist, political activist
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, ch. 6 (1990)
Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.
Helen Keller (1880-1968) American author and lecturer
The Open Door (1957)
The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) American industrialist and philanthropist
“Wealth,” North American Review (Jun 1889)
Reprinted in The Gospel of Wealth (1889).
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
Ben Hecht (1894-1964) American writer, director, producer, journalist
A Child of the Century (1954)
Senseless extravagance is the best friend of revolution.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“Our Present Discontents,” Outspoken Essays: First Series (1919)
I hold it to be our duty to see that the wage worker, the small producer, the ordinary consumer, shall get their fair share of the benefit of business prosperity. But it either is or ought to be evident to everyone that business has to prosper before anybody can get any benefit from it.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Speech, Ohio Constitutional Convention (1 Feb 1912)
We cannot exist as a little island of well-being in a world where two-thirds of the people go to bed hungry every night.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
Speech (8 Dec 1959)
SYDNEY: You don’t seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.
Jean Kerr (1922-2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Poor Richard, Act 1 (1965)
It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) American novelist, playwright
Main Street (1920)
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
Letter to Miss Vanhomrigh (12 Aug 1720)
(Source)
Privilege should not be tolerated because it is to the advantage of a minority; nor yet because it is to the advantage of a majority. No doctrinaire theories of vested rights or freedom of contract can stand in the way of our cutting out abuses from the body politic.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
“Biological Analogies in History,” Romanes Lecture, Oxford University (7 Jun 1910)
(Source)
Delay works always for the man with the longest purse.
William Howard Taft (1857-1930) US President (1909-13) and Chief Justice (1921-1930)
“Adequate Machinery for Judicial Business,” Journal of the American Bar Association (Sep 1921)
Money couldn’t buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy.
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (1918-2002) Anglo-Irish comedian, writer, actor
Puckoon, ch. 6 [Mrs. Doonan] (1963)
(Source)
The phrase, usually in the present tense, became a popular one of his, as in Norma Farnes, Memories of Milligan, "Spike on Spike" (2011): "Money can't buy you friends, but it does get you a better class of enemy," or the variant "Money can't buy you friends, but you get a better class of enemy."
Money can’t buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan (1918-2002) Anglo-Irish comedian, writer, actor
(Attributed)
A brave people will certainly prefer liberty, accompanied by virtuous poverty, to a depraved and wealthy servitude.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Anglo-Irish statesman, orator, philosopher
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
I am stressing that it is the force of ideas rather than the impact of material things that made us a great nation. It is my conviction, too, that only the power of ideas, of enduring values, can keep us a great nation. For, where there is no vision the people perish.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
Tomorrow Is Now (1963)
Most of us have achieved levels of affluence and comfort un-thought of two generations ago. We’ve never had it so good, most of us. Nor have we ever complained so bitterly about our problems. The closed circle of materialism is clear to us now — aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit. All around us we have seen success in the world’s terms become ultimate and desperate failure.
Mario Cuomo (1932-2015) American politician
Commencement Address, Iona College (3 Jun 1984)
