quotations about wealth
Wealth hath never given happiness, but often hastened misery.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Those that say they despise riches are saints or liars.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Like most children of affluence, I grew up with a distinct sense that my parents were only tolerably well off. This is because children always compare their families with wealthier ones, never with poorer. I thought I knew perfectly well what it meant to be rich in New York. If you were rich, you lived in a house with a pompous beaux-arts facade and kept a butler and gave children's parties with spun sugar on the ice cream and little cups of real silver as game prizes. If you were not rich you lived in a brownstone with Irish maids who never called you Master Louis and parents who hollered up and down the stairs instead of ringing bells.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
A Writer's Capital
Desire may reflect anything from a desperate need to a transitory want. In either case, wealth is anything that satisfies the craving. It applies balm to the itch. It may, in fact, gratify more than one desire at a time. We may want a touch of beauty on our living room wall. A painting, even an inexpensive reproduction, may provide a small surge of pleasure every time we pause to look at it. The same work of art may simultaneously fulfill our desire to impress visitors with our splendid good taste, or our social importance. But wealth can also be a bank account, a bicycle, a hoard of food or a health insurance policy.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Revolutionary Wealth
As a rule, the most biting and bitter of the castigators of wealth are those who have signally failed in the pursuit of it.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays, vol. II
A rich man is an honest man--no thanks to him; for he would be a double knave, to cheat mankind when he had no need of it: he has no occasion to press upon his integrity, nor so much as to touch upon the borders of dishonesty.
DANIEL DEFOE
Robinson Crusoe
The wealth of the richest 62 people grew by more than half a trillion dollars in that last half-decade, while the wealth of the poorest 50 percent of people globally decreased by more than $1 trillion during the same period. Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate.
GILLIAN B. WHITE
"Where Is All the World's Money Going?", The Atlantic, January 19, 2016
But I have wealth he cannot touch,
Spoiler of kings!
For I have tasted agony
And worn joy's wings.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"The Highwayman", Burning Bush
When a fortune comes without calling, it's apt to leave without asking.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Old Gorgon Graham
Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination of individual effort and of the manifold uses to which the community puts that effort. The individual does not create the product of his industry with his own hands; he utilizes the many processes and forces of mass production to meet the demands of a national and international market. Therefore, in spite of the great importance in our national life of the efforts and ingenuity of unusual individuals, the people in the mass have inevitably helped to make large fortunes possible. Without mass cooperation great accumulations of wealth would be impossible save by unhealthy speculation.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Message to Congress on Tax Revision, June 19, 1935
Real estate is at the core of almost every business, and it's certainly at the core of most people's wealth. In order to build your wealth and improve your business smarts, you need to know about real estate.
DONALD TRUMP
Think Like a Billionaire
So our Lord God commonly gives riches to those gross asses to whom He vouchsafes nothing else.
MARTIN LUTHER
attributed, Tischreden oder Colloquia
Luxury is artificial poverty; and no man has so much care as he who endeavours after the most riches.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Friends mostly test other's prosperity by their own; all wealth is but comparison of wealth.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Wealth is a tide which flows into one place by ebbing from another.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The loss of wealth is loss of dirt,
As sages of all times assert;
The happy man's without a shirt.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Be Merry Friends
The great thing about having been poor is how liberated it makes you if you eventually become rich. There's nothing like the knowledge that you don't need money to survive. That the money cushion you lie on every night doesn't have to be three feet thick, and you can still get to sleep.
BILL MAHER
"The Great Thing About Having Been Poor", HuffPost, March 1, 2012
It's the American dream. A third of Americans think they'll be rich someday. More than half of 18-29 year olds think they will be. Less than 5% actually make it. And many of those do it the old-fashioned way: they inherit it.
STEVE ROTH
"New Data Reveal the Depressing Truth About How Wealth Is Amassed in America", AlterNet, January 6, 2017
Failure seems to be regarded as the one unpardonable crime, success as the all-redeeming virtue, the acquisition of wealth as the single worthy aim of life.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
"A Chapter of Erie", North American Review, July 1869
Wealth is not just a matter of money. Wealth is also about power, status, opportunity, identity, and self-image. Wealth confers transformative advantages, while lack of it brings tremendous disadvantages. A family's income reflects educational and occupational achievements, but wealth is needed to solidify these achievements to build a solid foundation of economic security. Wealth is a fundamental pillar of economic security, and without it, hard-won gains are easily lost.
THOMAS M. SHAPIRO
"How Did America's Wealth Inequality Reach This Level of Toxic?", AlterNet, April 11, 2017