WEALTH QUOTES III
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
Small aid is wealth for daily gladness; once a man be done with hunger, rich and poor are all as one.
EURIPIDES
Electra
Some people aren't meant to be rich. It's like when Babe Ruth was the greatest home run hitter. There had never been anybody like him, and his teammates would ask, "Babe, Babe, how do you hit the long ball?" And he'd say, "I don't know, man. I just swing at it." I see it like that. It's just something you have, something you're born with. Many people don't have the ability to be rich, because they're too lazy or they don't have the desire or the stick-to-itiveness. It's a talent. Some people have a talent for piano. Some people have a talent for raising a family. Some people have a talent for golf. I just happen to have a talent for making money.
DONALD TRUMP
Playboy, October 2004
We may lack riches, but the greatest fortune is what lies in our hearts.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
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"
Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, July 12, 2006
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
There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Doctor Thorne
Jars neither of wine nor of water shall fail in the houses of the rich.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Kabeiroi
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
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
Competition, founded upon the conflicting interests of individuals, is in reality far less productive of wealth and enterprise than co-operation, involving though it does the constant apparent sacrifice of the individual to the common interests.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
A City Set on a Hill