quotations about wealth
Jars neither of wine nor of water shall fail in the houses of the rich.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Kabeiroi
Nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a large one.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1736
Wealth--the most excellent of all gods.
ARISTOPHANES
Plutus
To remain secure and prosperous themselves, wealthy nations must extend the kind of cooperation to the less fortunate members that will inspire hope, confidence and progress. A rich nation can for a time, without noticeable damage to itself, pursue a course of self- indulgence, making its single goal the material ease and comfort of its own citizens--thus repudiating its own spiritual and material stake in a peaceful and prosperous society of nations. But the enmities it will incur, the isolation into which it will descend, and the internal moral and physical softness that will be engendered, will, in the long term, bring it to disaster.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
State of the Union Address, January 7, 1960
As large trees are not the most productive, neither are wealthy men the most liberal.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
In my seasoned experience as a grouchy broke person, and my many years of coaching countless people on the topic of wealth, I've discovered that few things make people want to fight, vomit, or ask for their money back more than telling them that one must be rich to be successful and complete.
JEN SINCERO
You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth
The wealthy have nothing left except money.
GEORGE ADE
"The Fable of the Misdirected Sympathy and the Come-Back of the Proud Steam-Fitter", True Bills
Get rich or die tryin'.
50 CENT
Get Rich or Die Tryin'
There has always been a display of wealth and always will be, until the depression comes, which it always does. And let me tell you, a display is a good thing. It shows people that you can be successful. It can show you a way of life.
DONALD TRUMP
interview, Playboy, March 1990
Wealth which breeds idleness ... is only a sort of human oyster-bed, where heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life of slothfulness in growing plump and succulent for the grave-worm's banquet.
HORACE MANN
A Few Thoughts for a Young Man
The aspiration to wealth is deeply understantable. Getting high income from a good job is all well and good, but because wealth begets more wealth -- people are compensated simply for owning things -- wealth is, potentially, forever. It persists, and spreads through families and dynasties. Wealth can, and often does, endure for generations.
STEVE ROTH
"New Data Reveal the Depressing Truth About How Wealth Is Amassed in America", AlterNet, January 6, 2017
A common misconception about building wealth is that it's only possible with a high income. While a growing income obviously makes things easier, the preconception that it's absolutely necessary ends up missing the core idea of wealth accumulation. A bigger paycheck helps only if that money is being used optimally. We all know of various celebrities that have squandered millions of dollars and declared bankruptcy because of poor spending habits. Instead, building wealth is about making more than you consume, and then saving the difference. This means that the equation can be tackled on both sides of the spectrum, and that almost anyone can take steps to be more financially secure if they make smarter choices with their expenses.
MIKE MOZART
"Is it Possible to Build Wealth on Minimum Wage?", Equities, April 4, 2017
The effect of the concentration of wealth is to yield concentration of power.
NOAM CHOMSKY
Requiem for the American Dream
There are a thousand ways to Wealth, but only one way to Heaven.
JOHN LOCKE
Letters on Toleration
Jesus and the apostles nowhere speak of wealth as a thing to be prayed for. They nowhere characterize wealth as a blessing, or the accumulation of it, by enterprise and industry, as praiseworthy. The new dispensation nowhere promises either riches or long life to the righteous: it promises eternal life and treasures in heaven. The "poverty" which Jesus calls "blessed" consists, not in penury and the lack of the necessaries of life, but in abundance or non-abundance, with a knowledge that the abundance, if there be abundance, is the gratuitious gift of God; and also the knowledge, if there be non-abundance, that "whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth."
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments
The poor know well what wealth can do--
The rich their happiest chances miss;
We sit too close to grasp the view,
Or stand too far to feel the bliss.
CAROLINE SPENCER
"Outside"
Any man can become rich who is base enough to keep a brothel, a gin palace, or a gambling house.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
As the cream abandons the milk from which it took its life, and rises to the top and rides there, so men, because they are richer than those around about them, separate themselves, and all mankind below them they regard as skim milk.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune