Quotes about money

A collection of quotes on the topic of business, success, wealth, money.

Best quotes about money

Tupac Shakur photo
Marilyn Monroe photo

“I'm not interested in money, I just want to be wonderful.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

As quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972) p. 41

Erich Maria Remarque photo

“Anything you can settle with money is cheap.”

Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970) German novelist

Source: Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

John Steinbeck photo
Coco Chanel photo
Samuel Butler photo
Cornelius Keagon photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo

“It’s sad, y’know, what money does to people.”

Source: I Am Ozzy

Quotes about money

José Baroja photo

“If we focus only on making money, people's knowledge will be reduced until we become experts in our subject, but ignorant about human beings.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: https://www.peruinforma.com/entrevista-cultural-al-escritor-chileno-jose-baroja/

José Baroja photo
Tupac Shakur photo

“You know it's funny, when it rains it pours
they got money for wars, but can't feed the poor.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

"Keep Ya Head Up"
1990s, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z... (February 16, 1993)
Variant: They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor.

Nikola Tesla photo

“Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

As quoted in "A Visit to Nikola Tesla" by Dragislav L. Petković in Politika (April 1927); also in Tesla, Master of Lightning (1999) by Margaret Cheney, Robert Uth, and Jim Glenn, p. 82

Margaret Thatcher photo

“There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (14 October 1983) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105454
Second term as Prime Minister
Context: Let us never forget this fundamental truth: the State has no source of money other than money which people earn themselves. If the State wishes to spend more it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. It is no good thinking that someone else will pay – that ‘someone else’ is you. There is no such thing as public money; there is only taxpayers’ money.

Bill Gates photo
Keanu Reeves photo
Bob Marley photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Jim Morrison photo
Vandana Shiva photo

“In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

Source: Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace

Thomas Sowell photo
Dwayne Johnson photo
Hedy Lamarr photo

“I win because I learned years ago that scared money always loses. I never care, so I win.”

Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000) Austrian-American actress and co-inventor of an early technique for spread spectrum communications and freq…

Popcorn in Paradise (1980)

MF Doom photo
Paul Watson photo

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva photo

“Look, my friend. I don't speak the language here, I've got no money, the food stinks, there's no rice, no beans. I'd rather be arrested in Brazil than stay in this dump of a country.”

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945) Brazilian politician, 35th president of Brazil

Lula da Silva (1975), Cited in: Emir Sader, ‎Ken Silverstein (1991) Without Fear of Being Happy. p. 41
After being advised to stay in the United States when his brother was arrested in Brazil as a communist subversive.

Robert Bosch photo

“I do not pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.”

Robert Bosch (1861–1942) German industrialist, inventor, engineer

citation needed
Variant: I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.

Kian barazandeh photo

“You can't beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it.”

Kian barazandeh (1998) Actor , Model

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CUrm-SqLq-X/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Ayn Rand photo
Pablo Picasso photo

“I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Bill Skarsgård photo
Patch Adams photo

“I think my government are fascists. I feel that if we don't change from a society that worships money and power over to one that worships compassion and generosity, there is no hope for human survival this century.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

As quoted in "Entrevista com o médico americano P. Adams" in Roda Viva - Entrevista (13 November 2007)

Michael Jackson photo
Xenophon photo
Wilhelm Reich photo

“Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion”

Listen, Little Man! (1948)
Context: You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.

Al Capone photo
Al Capone photo
John Chrysostom photo

“Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication, from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God, and fight with His laws? What is a curse, do you seek as though it were a blessing? Do you make the anteroom of birth the anteroom of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is given to you for the procreation of offspring to perpetrate killing? That she may always be beautiful and lovable to her lovers, and that she may rake in more money, she does not refuse to do this, heaping fire on your head; and even if the crime is hers, you are the cause. Hence also arise idolatries. To look pretty many of these women use incantations, libations, philtres, potions, and innumerable other things. Yet after such turpitude, after murder, after idolatry, the matter still seems indifferent to many men–even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks, invocations of demons, incantations of the dead, daily wars, ceaseless battles, and unremitting contentions.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on the Epistle to the Romans [PG 60:626-27] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2017/10/contraception-early-church-teaching-william-klimon.html

Tupac Shakur photo

“It seems, my main thing was to be major paid
The game sharper than a motherfucking razor blade
Say money bring bitches, bitches bring lies.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

All Eyez On Me" (1996)
1990s, All Eyez on Me (1996)

Tupac Shakur photo
Trevor Noah photo
D.H. Lawrence photo
Dolly Parton photo

“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress

Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/11/dolly-parton-proust-questionnaire Interview with Vanity Fair magazine (November 2012)

James Baldwin photo

“Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy" in Esquire (May 1961)

Mark Twain photo

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

According to R. Ken Rasmussen in The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), this is most probably not Twain's.
Misattributed

Virginia Woolf photo

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

The Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/virginia-woolf/ traces the origin of such statements to The Intimate Notebooks of George Jean Nathan (1932), where the diarist states:
We were sitting one morning two Summers ago, Ferenc Molnár, Dr. Rudolf Kommer and I, in the little garden of a coffee-house in the Austrian Tyrol. “Your writing?” we asked him. “How do you regard it?” Languidly he readjusted the inevitable monocle to his eye. “Like a whore,” he blandly ventured. “First, I did it for my own pleasure. Then I did it for the pleasure of my friends. And now — I do it for money.”
Misattributed

Henry Miller photo

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One

Bob Marley photo
W.C. Fields photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Charles Manson photo
Warren Farrell photo
Shigeru Miyamoto photo
Jacque Fresco photo

“Whenever money is involved, there is elitism.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

6. The inhumanity of a monetary-based system.
The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002)

Tupac Shakur photo
Heydar Aliyev photo

“I ask Congressmen why they have such close relations with Armenia, and they say that the Armenian Diaspora gives them a lot of money. Is that corruption or not?”

Heydar Aliyev (1923–2003) Soviet and Azerbaijani politician

Answering the question of Jeffrey Goldberg "What sort of corruption do you see in America?" October 4, 1998, The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/04/magazine/the-crude-face-of-global-capitalism.html?pagewanted=all.

Jack Ma photo

“When you have one billion dollars, that's not your money. That's the trust the society gives [to] you.”

Jack Ma (1964) Chinese businessman

Source: Interview by Charlie Rose of Bloomberg - video https://video-kul1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t42.3356-2/13862860_1329741163720893_1430621767_n.mp4/video-1469885440.mp4?vabr=114407&oh=bff4e8f9cedc225267e41ec705562dcf&oe=582E0B32&dl=0: 1 minute 53 seconds into the video

Andrea Dworkin photo
Ronnie Radke photo

“The world will not end. This is ridiculous. I think it's like 2000. It's a great trick to do business and earn lots of money because stupid people hoard things. This is a stimulator of the economy.”

Ronnie Radke (1983) American singer

In an interview with the magazine Alt Press http://www.fallinginreverse.com.br/2012/06/entrevista-com-ronnie-radke-na-alt-press.html

Will Smith photo

“Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like.”

Will Smith (1968) American actor, film producer and rapper

Cf. LOOK Magazine 1957: Actor Walter Slezak's version of "keeping up with the Joneses": "Spending money you don't have for things you don't need to impress people you don't like." p. 10 books.google http://books.google.com/books?id=-NERAQAAMAAJ&q=slezak.
Misattributed

Lil Wayne photo

“Big money for the grill, so I'm never cheap talking.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Weezy's Ambitionz
Official Mix tapes, Dedication 2 (2006)

Baruch Ashlag photo
Steve Jobs photo

“It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in Fortune (9 November 1998); also quoted in "TIME digital 50" in TIME digital archive (1999) http://web.archive.org/web/20000612103032/http://www.time.com/time/digital/digital50/08.html
1990s
Context: Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.

Sun Tzu photo

“If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XI · The Nine Battlegrounds

Keanu Reeves photo
Michael Parenti photo
George Orwell photo
Jacque Fresco photo
Hamis Kiggundu photo

“The amount of money you have in you is the determinant factor of the nature of business you can do, not desires and emotions. Desires and Emotions will Cost you even the little capital you hold.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.36 (July 2018)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Keanu Reeves photo
Pavel Durov photo

“Every one of us is going to die eventually, but we as a species will stick around for a while. That’s why I think accumulating money, fame or power is irrelevant. Serving humanity is the only thing that really matters in the long run.”

Pavel Durov (1984) Russian entrepreneur

" Why WhatsApp Will Never Be Secure https://telegra.ph/Why-WhatsApp-Will-Never-Be-Secure-05-15" 2019-05-15
In reference to his expatriation from Russia after refusing to breach the privacy of VK users for the government

George Orwell photo

“Poverty frees them from normal standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work”

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 1
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people — people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from normal standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words.

George Best photo

“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

George Best (1946–2005) British footballer

Reported in " Best: Decline of the golden boy http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4090840.stm", BBC News (June 14 2005).

Oscar Wilde photo
George Orwell photo

“Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.”

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 4
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.

Oprah Winfrey photo
Ogden Nash photo

“If you don't want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"More About People"
Many Long Years Ago (1945)
Source: Hard Lines

Jean Jacques Rousseau photo
Aristotle photo

“Any one can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for every one, nor is it easy.”

Book II, 1109a.27.
Variant translation: Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.
As quoted in The Child: At Home and School (1944) by Edith M. Leonard, Lillian E. Miles, and Catherine S. Van der Kar, p. 203
Nicomachean Ethics

Hayao Miyazaki photo
Michael Moorcock photo
George Orwell photo

“If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters.”

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 1
Source: Why I Write
Context: Money, once again; all is money. All human relationships must be purchased with money. If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters. And how right they are, after all! For, moneyless, you are unlovable. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels. But then, if I haven't money, I DON'T speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

Margaret Thatcher photo

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102777
The last sentence is widely paraphrased as "The trouble/problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."
Leader of the Opposition
Variant: They’ve got the usual Socialist disease – they’ve run out of other people's money.
Context: And I will go on criticising Socialism, and opposing Socialism because it is bad for Britain – and Britain and Socialism are not the same thing... It's the Labour Government that have brought us record peace-time taxation. They’ve got the usual Socialist disease – they’ve run out of other people's money.

Alexander Pope photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Charles Bukowski photo
George Orwell photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 4

“She's strong! And scary… I bet she's single… I'd put money on it..”

Source: Naruto, Vol. 18: Tsunade's Choice

Katharine Hepburn photo
Thomas Sowell photo

“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: 1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

Will Rogers photo
Abba Lerner photo
George Orwell photo
Amos Oz photo
Tupac Shakur photo

“More money means litigating, more player-hating. Got a cell at the pen, for me waiting. Is this my fate?”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

"Hold Ya Head" https://play.google.com/music/preview/Te5ppuyfquh4t6lnlla3zs6w33e?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics
1990s, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (1996)

Lil Wayne photo

“Fresh out the bank, it's the Birdman Junior, money too long. Teachers, put away your rulers.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Fireman, written with Bigram Zayas and Matthew DelGiorno.
1990s, Tha Carter II (2018)

Mike Tyson photo

“When I had money I was an animal. I was so belligerent. I lost all across the board.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-11621981-details/I'm+a+street+bum,+says+broke+Tyson/article.do;jsessionid=dZGvFJZGkLvsnbWWXZrVhsZ2kJlny8kkygtqYThr5ZL2nyWzmSjJ!-686754952
On himself

Matka Tereza photo

“I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No. I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

1970s
Source: Malcolm Muggeridge, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, A Gift For God: Prayers and Meditations, New York: Harper & Row, 1975. p. 61; Cited in: M. Dhavamony. "Mother Teresa's mission of love for the poor" in: Studia missionalia, Vol 39. (1990), p. 137

Gilles Villeneuve photo
J. Paul Getty photo

“My father said, 'You must never try to make all the money that's in a deal. Let the other fellow make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the money, you won't have many deals.”

J. Paul Getty (1892–1977) American industrialist

J. Paul Getty cited in: Alison Branagan (2009) Making Sense of Business: A No-Nonsense Guide to Business Skills. p. 136

Eminem photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“Dark green is my favorite color. It's the color of nature and the color of money and the color of moss!”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Michael Jackson photo

“They’re like leeches. I’m so tired of it. They start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything. End up penniless. It is conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

November 2005 reported by report by NY Post https://nypost.com/2005/11/23/jerko-jackos-ugly-jabs-at-jews-calls-them-leeches-on-tape/