quotations about wealth
A rich man is one who isn't afraid to ask the salesperson to show him something cheaper.
JACK BENNY
The Jack Benny Program
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
There are a thousand ways to Wealth, but only one way to Heaven.
JOHN LOCKE
Letters on Toleration
The rich man's happiness is but from the teeth outwards, a counterfeit satisfaction, with a worm in his heart.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
You obviously don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. It is not a fat purse and time to spend it. Its owner finds himself beset on every side, at every hour, wherever he goes, by persistent pleaders, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious of honest friendship--indeed honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could have been his friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
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
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
I call this inequality toxic because, over time and generations, it builds upon itself. Wealth and race map together to consolidate historic injustices, which now weave through neighborhoods and housing markets, educational institutions, and labor markets, creating an increasingly divided opportunity structure. So long as we have entrenched wealth inequality intertwined with racial inequality, we cannot even begin to bend the arc toward equity.
THOMAS M. SHAPIRO
"How Did America's Wealth Inequality Reach This Level of Toxic?", AlterNet, April 11, 2017
For having wealth and wherewithal to "do good", if you do it not, talk not of faith, for you have no faith in you.
LANCELOT ANDREWES
Ninety-six Sermons
While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of "rags to riches" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.
HOWARD ZINN
A People's History of the United States
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"
It is doubtful if even experience of riches and success is as intense among those who have experienced nothing else as among those who have also experienced poverty and failure. There is little romance in wealth to those who have been born wealthy and whose families have been wealthy for generations.
ROBERT WILSON LYND
The Little Angel: A Book of Essays
Wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
HENRY GEORGE
Progress and Poverty
Behind the deceptive words designed to entice people into supporting violence -- words like democracy, freedom, self-defense, national security -- there is the reality of enormous wealth in the hands of a few, while billions of people in the world are hungry, sick, homeless.
HOWARD ZINN
preface, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
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
Some people who have a lot of money like to show it off. They buy large houses, expensive cars, and all the toys you can imagine. But others keep their affluence on the down low. They don't look any different from anyone else, but they have some serious cash stashed away. These folks have what is known as stealth wealth. They are worth way more than they appear to be, and they often manage to retire early or follow their dreams in some other way that surprises the people around them -- people who never realized they had that kind of money.
SARAH WINFREY
"5 Reasons Stealth Wealth Is the Best Wealth", WiseBread, March 24, 2017
Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1736
It is a shame for a man to be a millionaire in possessions if he is not also a millionaire in beneficence.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Problems of Life: Selections from the Writings of Rev. Lyman Abbott