WEALTH QUOTES IV

quotations about wealth

There's a common misconception that wealth is a fixed pie, and that therefore for one person to have a lot of wealth requires somebody else to have less (the narrative often goes that wealthy people stole their wealth from poor and middle class people) ... [but] wealth can grow, so that even if someone's percentage of the pie remains the same, they will benefit from that individual slice getting bigger.

IAN TARTT

"Bernie Sanders on the Koch Brothers and Libertarian Ideas", The Libertarian Republic, April 18, 2017


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


Wealth--the most excellent of all gods.

ARISTOPHANES

Plutus

Tags: Aristophanes


If you do not appreciate what you now have you will never appreciate what you will have.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts

Tags: Lewis F. Korns


Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

"The Rich Boy"

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


Get rich or die tryin'.

50 CENT

Get Rich or Die Tryin'

Tags: 50 Cent


Wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

FRANK HERBERT

God Emperor of Dune

Tags: Frank Herbert


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

Tags: Lancelot Andrewes


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


Great wealth may be to its owner a blessing or a curse. Alas! I fear it is too often the latter. It hardens the heart, blunts the finer susceptibilities, and transforms into a fiend what under more favourable circumstances might have been a human being.

ARNOLD BENNETT

A Question of Sex

Tags: Arnold Bennett


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

Tags: Henry George


Titles, riches, and fine houses signify no more to the making of one man better than another, than the finer saddle to the making the better horse.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine

Tags: Wellins Calcott


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

Tags: Robert Wilson Lynd


A man is rich whose income is larger than his expenses, and he is poor if his expenses are greater than his income.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères


Great wealth and great poverty will disintegrate a nation in about the same time.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts


Wealth is an engine that can be used for power, if you are an engineer; but to be tied to the fly wheel of an engine is rather a misfortune.

ELBERT HUBBARD

The American Bible

Tags: Elbert Hubbard


Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

letter to Ernest Hemingway, August 1936


Wealth has never the value to its possessor as it is supposed to have by an avaricious admirer.

ANTHONY LISLE

The Westminster Review, January 1914


The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.

HONORE DE BALZAC

Père Goriot

Tags: Honore de Balzac


Envy wealth for its power of good, not ill.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims

Tags: Edward Counsel