Quotes about money

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

Best quotes about money

“They got money for wars but they can’t feed the poor. ”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“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

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“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

“Anything that just costs money is cheap.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

“There are people who have money and people who are rich.”

Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French fashion designer

“Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

“Without money there is no lasting imagination in this city!”

José Baroja book Sueño en Guadalajara y otros cuentos

“I'm married to my money because it never cheats on me”

Cornelius Keagon (1996) Liberian humanitarian aid worker

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

Ozzy Osbourne book I Am Ozzy

Source: I Am Ozzy

W.C. Fields quote: “A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money”

Quotes about money

“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/

People, Knowledge

“I think of the northern country, the United States, where they are specialists, very good at what they do, but sometimes, many times, they have no memory of the things that have happened, because they are so interested in raising money that the past is blurred and give meaning to ignorance on the basis of consumption.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

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

Thinking, Memory, Time, Past

“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.

War

“Whatever you do, make sure that you have those things that money can't buy”

Cornelius Keagon (1996) Liberian humanitarian aid worker

“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

Life, Men

“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.

“When you have money in hand, only you forget who are you. But when you do not have any money in your hand, the whole world forget who you are. It's life.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Life, World, Forgetting

“I never cared about the money, that's not why I started acting, and I never liked the fame. The paparazzi culture is more pervasive than it used to be, kind of: 'Let's watch the actor pump gas.' It's nice not to have to worry about bills, though.
It's a cliche that money doesn't buy you happiness, but it does buy you the freedom to live your life the way you want.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Life, Happiness, Way, Freedom

“I wish we were all hippies and did yoga, lived in cottages, smoked weed, accepted everyone for who they are, and listened to wonderful music. I wish money didn't make us who we are. I just wish we could redo society.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Music

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

Hell, Fight

“Money beats soul every goddamn time.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Soul, Time

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

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

Source: Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace

Life, Nature

“If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.”

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

“The Rock: I am married to savannah mullins; I need to take this moment, and I need to tell you something as Dwayne. It's been a long time since I've been back. Seven years to be exact; but I want to take this moment, in the middle of this ring, to tell you why I'm back. It's not because of the money. It's not to promote a movie. I am back in the middle of this ring because of you. When I left - when I left the WWE seven years ago I dreamed big, and you guys dreamed big with me. You helped me accomplish my goals - accomplish my dreams - because you never. left. my side; and I wanna take this moment to tell you all here - you're live here - millions watching around the world. I wanna tell you thank you. I love you, and it is because of you that I am back in this ring, and it is because of you - and I give you my word - I am never ever going away. Simply put, ladies and gentlemen, The Rock is back!”

Dwayne Johnson (1972) American actor and professional wrestler

The Rock's return to WWE Raw as host of WrestleMania XXVII (14 February, 2011) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8ejiG5-BtA&feature=related.

Love, World, Dreams, Guy

“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)

Learning

“And we'll be right back after these messages, fellas grab ya nuttsacks chicks squeeze your breastsess, we ain't all that grown it's still funny like goin to the store with your own rainbow money, since that had an insane flow sonny”

MF Doom (1971) hip hop artist from America

With DANGERDOOM, "Old School", The Mouse and the Mask (2005)
Sourced Lines

“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

Life, Death, People, World

“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.

Food, Country

“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.

“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=

“So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Thinking, Evil

“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

Funny

“I'm constantly embarrassed at the level of attention actors get and the level of money that we get. It's completely disproportionate. I think you have to feel guilty about it. I think it makes you a better person to keep reminding yourself.”

Bill Skarsgård (1990) Swedish actor

Interview: Bill Skarsgård http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/bill-skarsgard-1#_ (June 5, 2017)

Feeling, Thinking, Personality

“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)

Hope, Feeling, Thinking, Change

“I don't care what you talkin' 'bout baby.
I don't care what you say.
Don't you come walkin' beggin' back mama.
I don't care anyway.
Time after time I gave you all of my money.
No excuses to make.
Ain't no mountain that I can't climb baby.
All is going my way.”

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

Bad (1987)

Way, Mountain, Time, Baby

“It is common opinion among us in regard to beauty and wisdom that there is an honourable and a shameful way of bestowing them. For to offer one’s beauty for money to all comers is called prostitution; but we think it virtuous to become friendly with a lover who is known to be a man of honour. So is it with wisdom. Those who offer it to all comers for money are known as sophists, prostitutors of wisdom.”

Xenophon (-430–-354 BC) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Words spoken by Socrates to Antiphon in Memorabilia, 1.6.11.

Wisdom, Beauty, Way, Lovers

“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”

Wilhelm Reich book Listen, Little Man!

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.

Love, Life, Freedom

“Money buys you the freedom to live your life the way you want.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Life, Way, Freedom

“I'm tired of gang murders and gang shootings. It's a tough life to lead. You fear death at every moment, and worse than death, you fear the rats of the game who'd run around and tell the police if you don't constantly satisfy them with money and favors.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Life, Death, Fear, Game

“I'm a businessman. I've made my money supplying a popular demand. If I break the law, my customers are as guilty as I am.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Law

“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

Women, Men, God, War

“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)

Game, Bitch

“I made a metamorphose, I'm a new person today, because I used to strongly and honestly, honestly! I feel like I can represent my generation so much because I honestly did not care whether I lived or died. But now I can not die, with people thinking I'm a rapist or a criminal, I can not leave until this shit is straight, you know I'm not suicidal. I can't go until ya'll really know what time it is. And then after that, BOOM!, It's all over and we can see how this shit fall, but that's how it is, and the reason being is because if I can't live free, if I can't live with the same respect as the next man, I don't wanna be here, because god has cursed me to see what life should be like, If God wanted me to be this person and be happy here, he wouldn't let me feel so oppressed, he wouldn't let me feel so trampled on, you know what I'm saying, he wouldn't let me think the things I think. So I feel I'm doing Gods work, you know what I'm saying just because I don't have nothing to pass around for people to put money in a bucket don't mean I ain't doing God's work.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Ed Gordon interview (1994)

Life, God, Happiness, People

“People don’t want to be rich. They want to be able to choose. The richer you are, the more choices you have. That is the freedom of money.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 188
Born a Crime

People, Freedom

“Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

“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)

“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)

Sex

“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

Sun

“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

Love, Sex

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

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One

Hope

“Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Happiness, Search

“A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Funny

“Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Time

“I don't want to take my time going to work. I got a motorcycle and a sleeping bag and 10 or 15 girls. What the hell I want to go off and go to work for? Work for what? Money? I've got all the money in the world. I'm the king, man! I run the underworld, guy! I decide who does what and where they do it at! What am I gonna run around and act like I'm some teeny-bopper somewhere for somebody else's money? I make the money, man. I roll the nickels. The game is mine! I deal the cards.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-U2-cAUMM

World, Guy, Girl, Game

“I am often asked why men don’t get as worked up as they might about women—particularly poor women—having to use their bodies as prostitutes. Because most men unconsciously experience themselves as prostitutes every day—the miner, the firefighter, the construction worker, the logger, the soldier, the meatpacker—these men are prostitutes in the direct sense: they sacrifice their bodies for money and for their families.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 233.

Women, Men, Family, Sense

“Originally, I wanted a machine that would cost $100. My idea was to spend nothing on the console technology so all the money could be spent on improving the interface and software. If we hadn't used NAND flash memory [to store data such as games and photos] and other pricey parts, we might have succeeded.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

On Wii Source: November 16, 2006 Business Week interview http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2006/tc20061116_750580.htm

Photo, Game, Idea, Memory

“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)

“I gotta big mouth, I can't help it, I talk from my heart, I'm real you know what I'm sayin whatever comes comes. But my controverse problems, It's not my fault, I try to find my way in the world you know, I try to be somebody instead of just, make money off of everybody. You know what im saying, so I go down paths that haven't been traveled before and I usually mess up, but I learn, you know what I'm saying, I come back stronger, I'm not talking ignorant, you know what I'm saying. So obviously put thought into what I do. So I think my mouth, my controverse, I have not been out of the paper since I joined Digital Underground, I've been in all, you know what I'm saying, my name has not been not uttered, you know what I'm saying, and that's good for me because I don't wanna be forgotten. If I'm forgotten then that means I'm comfortable and that means I think everything is okay.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, MTV interview (1994)

World, Way, Travel, Problem

“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.

“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

“Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

p 53.
Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Men, Learning

“(on the Indian presence in his country): "Let us not ignore the fact that there is another community settled here in our midst. I refer to the Indians. They have increased more rapidly than we. They have become producers on our soil. They are continuously striving to better themselves. Although they are a different race, yet we are each a unit in the British Empire. They have shouldered many burdens that have helped Fiji onward. We have derived much money from them by way of rents. A large proportion of our prosperity is derived from their labour."”

Lala Sukuna (1888–1958) Chief of Lau and civil servant in Fiji

1936 speeches to the Great Council of Chiefs

Way, Communication, Help, Country

“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

People, Stupidity, World, Business

“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

People

“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)

“I just don't think religion should be a money making organization. There is never a need to send churches or cults money for any reason. If you want to feel good about yourself or make your God happy, give your money directly to a charity or a homeless person. But once again this is my opinion, and I don't want to be in a position of also dictating.”

John Roecker (1966) American film director

An Epic Interview with John Roecker, FilmJerk, www.filmjerk.com, Kristopher, Terrell, August 23, 2003 http://www.filmjerk.com/interviews/article.php?id_int=12,

God, Happiness, Religion, Feeling

“A good, skillful worker is one who does not consider the reward, but enjoys his work. If, for example, a skillful tailor knows that the clothing fits its owner at every point, it gives him pleasure, more than the money he receives.”

Baruch Ashlag (1907–1991) Polish rabbi

Selected Articles

Pleasure, Clothes

“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.

People

“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

“Money doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve made a lot of money, but I want to enjoy lie and not stress myself building my bank account. I give lots away and live simply, mostly out of a suitcase in hotels. We all know that good health is much more important.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Health, Lie

“Here is a story of latifundia and death squads, masters and slaves, patriarchs and subordinated women, self-enriching capitalists and plundered provinces, proﬁteering slumlords and urban rioters. Here is a struggle between the plutocratic few and the indigent many, the privileged versus the proletariat, featuring corrupt politicians, money-driven elections, and the political assassination of popular leaders. I leave it to the reader to decide whether any of this might resonate with the temper of our own times.”

Michael Parenti book The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome

Introduction
The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (2003)

Death, Women, Time, Self-confidence

“There are two ways to live, he decided. You can be rich, or you can deliberately refuse to be rich. You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch.3

Way

“The existence of money is hardly ever questioned or examined, but let’s consider our use of money.... There are many disadvantages to using this old method of exchange for goods and services. We will consider just a few here and let you add to this list on your own.”

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

Designing the Future (2007)

Question

“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)

Business, Nature

“The optimist will never say that he's unemployed. But he will claim that he has full freedom to do anything he wants. He can choose whether to make money or waste his VALUABLE time.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Freedom, Time

“When we are uncomfortable or anything unpleasant happens, we look to take refuge in something. Usually, we turn to food, alcohol, sex, drugs, money, power, or relationships. But none of these things give us the lasting protection or satisfaction you're looking for. When you understand you can't find lasting happiness in Samsara, then the desire to find true refuge becomes strong. In Buddhism, we take refuge in the three jewels — the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The Buddha is like the doctor who understands your disease and knows how to treat it; the Dharma, his teachings, is the medicine he prescribes; and the Sangha is the spiritual community that helps you to take the medicine. To take refuge is to finally seek protection from suffering in a way that can really help you. When we think about the ultimate nature of reality and what causes us to suffer — this is the true meaning of refuge.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Source: Discovering Buddhism, 2004 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=226w04QMPzQ

Happiness, Alcohol, Disease, Food

“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

Thinking

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

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

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.

People

“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).

Cars, Bird

“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Communication, Thinking

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

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

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.

“Dogs are my favorite role models. I want to work like a dog, doing what I was born to do with joy and purpose. I want to play like a dog, with total, jolly abandon. I want to love like a dog, with unabashed devotion and complete lack of concern about what people do for a living, how much money they have, or how much they weigh. The fact that we still live with dogs, even when we don't have to herd or hunt our dinner, gives me hope for humans and canines alike.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Love, People, Dogs, Hope

“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

“She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces… But I loved her”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Love, Shoe, Time

“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.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

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

Way, Motivation, Time, Personality

“But remember this, Japanese boy… airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.”

Hayao Miyazaki The Wind Rises

Source: The Wind Rises

War, Beauty, Dreams, Boy

“What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Anger

“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.”

George Orwell Why I Write

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.

Love, Women, Men

“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.

People, Problem

“If you want to know what God thinks about money just look at the people He gives it to.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

God, People, Thinking, Funny

“Making money isn't hard in itself… What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Life

“Money is like sex,' I said. 'It seems much more important when you don't have any…'

'You talk like a writer,' said Francois.”

Charles Bukowski book Hollywood

Source: Hollywood

Sex

“In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except "Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

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

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

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..”

Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto

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

Strong

“I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Support

“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)

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

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

People, Funny

“The central idea is that government fiscal policy, its spending and taxing, its borrowing and repayment of loans, its issue of new money and withdrawal of money, shall be undertaken with an eye only to the results of these actions on the economy and not to any established traditional doctrine what is sound and what is unsound …Government should adjust its rates of expenditure and taxation such that total spending is neither more or less than that which is sufficient to purchase the full employment level of output at current prices. If this means there is deficit, greater borrowing, "printing money," etc., then these things in themselves are neither good or bad, they are simply the means to the desired ends of full employment and price stability.”

Abba Lerner (1903–1982) American economist

On Functional Finance: (1943, pg.354) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174849

Idea

“Most of the employees were the hard-boiled, Americanized, go-getting type to whom nothing in the world is sacred, except money. They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket. And yet beneath their cynicism there was the final naivete, the blind worship of the money-god.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 3

God, World, Swine

“The kibbutz way of life is not for everyone. It is meant for people who are not in the business of working harder than they should be working, in order to make more money than they need, in order to buy things they don't really want, in order to impress people they don't really like.”

Amos Oz (1939–2018) Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual

"The Great Disruption", In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, 17 Jun 1999, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545kh

Life, People, Way, Business

“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)

Hate, Fate, Waiting

“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)

Teachers

“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

Animals

“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

Love, God, People