“Money is the source of the greatest vice, & that Nation which is most rich, is most wicked.”
The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 1, p. 48, journal entry, November 17, 1768.
Letters
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Frances Burney16
English writer 1752–1840Related quotes
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Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist
Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)
Context: In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist
F 87
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)