Quotes about money
page 12

Pat Robertson photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“A constant in the history of money is that every remedy is reliably a source of new abuse.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter II, Of Coins and Treasure

Keshia Chante photo

“Whoever said money can't buy happiness wasn't spending it helping people who needed it.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Official Website (2009)

Nicole Oresme photo

“Since money belongs to the community … it would seem that the community may control it as it wills, and therefore may make as much profit from alteration as it likes, and treat money as its own property.”

Nicole Oresme (1323–1382) French philosopher

Source: Traictie de la Première Invention des Monnoies (1355), Ch. 22: Whether the community may alter money.

William John Macquorn Rankine photo
Francis Escudero photo
Fetty Wap photo

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

John Ruskin photo
Glenn Beck photo
William Saroyan photo

“I loved the theaters, and even though I was hungry, I never spent money for food.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

“The multiplier effect is a major feature of networks and flows. It arises regardless of the particular nature of the resource, be it goods, money, or messages.”

John H. Holland (1929–2015) US university professor

Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 1. Basic Elements, p. 25

George Washington Plunkitt photo

“Of course, the day may come when we’ll reject the money of the rich as tainted, but it hadn’t come when I left Tammany Hall at 11:25 A. M. today. p. 73”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 18, On the Use of Money in Politics

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“3444. Money, like Dung, does no Good till ’tis spread.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“They who are of opinion that Money will do every thing, may very well be suspected to do every thing for Money.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

“That is a complete waste of your time and the government's money. You are a native speaker of English; in ten minutes you can produce more illustrations of any point in English grammar than you will find in many millions of words of random text.”

Lees's response when informed that Nelson Francis had received a grant to produce the Brown Corpus.
Biber, D., and E. Finegan. 1991. "On the exploitation of computerized corpora in variation studies." In K. Aijmer and B. Altenberg (eds.), English corpus linguistics: Studies in honour of Jan Svartvik, 204-220. London: Longman.

Donald J. Trump photo
Kin Hubbard photo

“When a fellow says, "It hain't the money, but th' principle o' the thing," it's th' money.”

Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) cartoonist

Hoss Sense and Nonsense (1926).
As quoted in The American Treasury, 1455-1955 (1955) by Clifton Fadiman, p. 993.
Variant: When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money.

W. S. Gilbert photo

“No money, no grovel!
(Actually an ad-lib introduced by Rutland Barrington when playing the rôle of Pooh-Bah, to the annoyance of Gilbert.)”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Mikado (1885)

Ignatius Sancho photo

“…an awkward loon- whom I do sometimes care about- who has more wit than money- more good sense than wit- more urbanity than sense- and more pride than some princes”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 42: 9 Oct 1779, to Mr M___ ) [describing a friend]

“Probably the easiest thing would be to vasectimize males at the age of 13 after freezing some of their sperm. Then you could unfreeze it only after they have enough money to support a child up to the age of 18.”

Barbara Seaman (1935–2008) American journalist

[Sarah Boxes, The Contraception Conundum: It's Not Just Birth Control Anymore, The New York Times, 1997-06-22, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DEFD6153BF931A15755C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2, 2008-02-09]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky photo
Doris Lessing photo

“Win or lose, everybody gets what they want out of the market. Some people seem to like to lose, so they win by losing money.”

Ed Seykota (1946) American commodities trader

Source: Schwager, Jack D. (Editor), Market Wizards, HarperCollins (1989), page 172, ISBN 0-88730-610-1, Read it here http://books.google.com/books?id=jNG7r-Ul7jwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=market+wizards&ei=stanR4q2LKTeiQGMxbFo&sig=8NhAQMHBUZCiBzaJjF4o2ZcOGMY#PPA172,M1

Stella Vine photo
Kristi Noem photo

“We must stop spending money that we just don’t have. Historic debt leads to historic tax increases, which stifle job growth.”

Kristi Noem (1971) South Dakota politician

Lawrence, Tom. S.D. Rep. Noem pushes for big cuts in federal spending http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/event/article/id/50875/group/homepage/, The Daily Republic, March 11, 2011.

Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“A fool and his money is one big party.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Stanley Baldwin photo

“What about my Soul? That's all right. The essence of such service is unselfishness. My first thought has to be of others, of the relationship of Crown and people: there will be no room to think of money or of my own career.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to J. C. C. Davidson (28 January 1919) on contemplating acceptance of government office, quoted in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers, 1910-1937 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 95.
1910s

Michael Lewis photo
Ingmar Bergman photo
Henry Hazlitt photo

“Let us begin with the simplest illustration possible: let us, emulating Bastiat, choose a broken pane of glass.A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.”

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Broken Window (ch. 2)

Donald J. Trump photo
Ron Paul photo
Ron Paul photo
Margaret Chan photo
Chuck Berry photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“We have to be cognizant of the fact that they've had foreign fighters coming to volunteer for them, foreign money, foreign weapons, so we have to make this the top priority.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Jodie Marsh photo

“Most men – not just the men in Brentwood – are scared of powerful women with brains. There’s something in a man that makes him want to have power over a woman – whether it’s in the bedroom or because they earn more money. It boosts their egos.”

Jodie Marsh (1978) English glamour model and television personality

Interview in The Metro http://www.metro.co.uk/showbiz/interviews/39209-60-seconds-jodie-marsh#ixzz1o9GF3Az0, undated.

George William Curtis photo

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Peter Singer photo
Holden Karnofsky photo
Oliver Stone photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo

“The journalist Enzo Biagi left the RAI out of free will … he did it for the money.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

As reported in "Veteran Italian journalist Enzo Biagi, 87, dies in Milan" in Herald Tribune (6 November 2007) http://web.archive.org/web/20081210192053/http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/06/europe/EU-GEN-Italy-Obit-Biagi.php; Enzo Biagi was one of the journalists that had to leave the RAI after the Editto Bulgaro of in 2002, in which he was accused by Berlusconi of making criminal use of television.
2007

“Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.”

Claus Moser, Baron Moser (1922–2015) British statistician and Civil Servant

The Daily Telegraph, 21 August 1990 http://www2.gsu.edu/~dscthw/8350/bayes/perfinfo.pdf

Robert Jeffress photo
John Updike photo

“If men do not keep on speaking terms with children, they cease to be men, and become merely machines for eating and for earning money.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“A Foreword for Younger Readers,” Assorted Prose (1965)

Mobutu Sésé Seko photo
Ann Coulter photo

“We're always told that we need to amnesty illegals to shore up Social Security. How, exactly, are people who make so little money that they don't pay income taxes going to save Social Security?”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2015, Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (2015)

“An artist is a socially unattractive person whom socially attractive people make money out of.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Thomas Jefferson photo
Peter D. Schiff photo
John McLaughlin photo

“Whether people accept this music or not, I don’t give a damn. I know how good—and right—the group is. We all sell out to a point. And don’t get me wrong, I like living comfortably and having a nice car. But if money determines your art, then what’s the point?”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On the criticism of his acoustic band Shakti, after temporarily retiring his electric period with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, as quoted in Jerome, Jim. "John McLaughlin Pulls the Plug on His Guitar, but He's as Electrifying as Ever", People Magazines. 21 June 1976. http://people.com/archive/john-mc-laughlin-pulls-the-plug-on-his-guitar-but-hes-as-electrifying-as-ever-vol-5-no-24/

Subhas Chandra Bose photo

“Gird up your loins for the task that now lies ahead. I had asked you for men, money and materials. I have got them in generous measure. Now I demand more of you. Men, money and materials cannot by themselves bring victory or freedom. We must have the motive-power that will inspire us to brave deeds and heroic exploits.”

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) Indian nationalist leader and politician

Speech in Burma (July 1944) as quoted in The Great Speeches of Modern India (2011) https://books.google.com/books?id=z7dCH_IYbt8C&pg=PT137&lpg=PT137&dq=%22Gird+up+your+loins+for+the+task+that+now+lies+ahead.+I+had+asked+you+for+men,+money+and+materials%22&source=bl&ots=KiUxFbJQjT&sig=v7j_-1MYNUSCQFLxt8ElNpDicjc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=tjIVVcyEFoLfoAS13oDQDA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22Gird%20up%20your%20loins%20for%20the%20task%20that%20now%20lies%20ahead.%20I%20had%20asked%20you%20for%20men%2C%20money%20and%20materials%22&f=false by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Geovanny Vicente photo
John D. Rockefeller photo

“The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.”

John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist

Attributed in The Fourth — And by Far the Most Recent 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (1990) by Robert Byrne; attributed elsewhere to Nathan M. Rothschild

Adolf Hitler photo
Ulrich Duchrow photo

“Western civilisation, with its own spirituality, has permeated all corners of the earth. My thesis is that this is the spirituality of money.”

Ulrich Duchrow (1935) German theologian

"Spirituality for democracy and social cohesion versus the spirituality of money," Verbum et Ecclesia 35(3) http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v35i3.1332

James A. Garfield photo

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…. And when you realize the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

The first sentence, attributed to Garfield since the 1890s http://books.google.com/books?id=-RoPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA156&dq=%22Whoever+controls+the+volume+of+money%22, is almost certainly a paraphrase of Garfield's "absolute dictator" quote, above. The second part is a late 20th-century commentary misattributed to Garfield.
Misattributed

Bill Whittle photo

“Government can take your money at gunpoint; businesses have to persuade you.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

What We Believe, Part 1: Small Government and Free Enterprise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLD6VChcWCE (7 October 2010)
2010s

Esperanza Aguirre photo

“Socialism fails when it run out of money of others.”

Esperanza Aguirre (1952) Spanish politician

Source: NoticiasEsperanzaAguirre.es http://www.noticiasesperanzaaguirre.es/aguirre-el-socialismo-fracasa-cuando-se-le-acaba-el-dinero-de-diario-siglo-xxi/. April 2011.

Morrissey photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Vangelis photo
Thomas Merton photo
Oksana Shachko photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“In Vermont, at a state beach, a mother is reprimanded by Authority for allowing her 6 month old daughter to go about without her diapers on. Now, if children go around naked, they are liable to see each others sexual organs, and maybe even touch them. Terrible thing! If we [raise] children up like this it will probably ruin the whole pornography business, not to mention the large segment of the general economy which makes its money by playing on peoples sexual frustrations.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

1969 essay in the Freeman — as quoted in "You Might Very Well Be the Cause of Cancer": Read Bernie Sanders' 1970s-Era Essays http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-freeman-sexual-freedom-fluoride, by Tim Murphy, Mother Jones (6 July 2015)
1970s

H.L. Mencken photo
Klaus Kinski photo
Lee Kuan Yew photo

“How does the Malay in the kampong find his way out into this modernised civil society? By becoming servants of the 0.3 per cent who would have the money to hire them to clean their shoe, open their motorcar doors?”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew in the Parliament of Malaysia, 1965 http://maddruid.com/?p=645
1960s

Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
John Fante photo

“I went up to my room, up the dusty stairs of Bunker Hill, past the soot-covered frame buildings along that dark street, sand and oil and grease choking the futile palm trees standing like dying prisoners, chained to a little plot of ground with black pavement hiding their feet. Dust and old buildings and old people sitting at windows, old people tottering out of doors, old people moving painfully along the dark street. The old folk from Indiana and Iowa and Illinois, from Boston and Kansas City and Des Moines, they sold their homes and their stores, and they came here by train and by automobile to the land of sunshine, to die in the sun, with just enough money to live until the sun killed them, tore themselves out by the roots in their last days, deserted the smug prosperity of Kansas City and Chicago and Peoria to find a place in the sun. And when they got here they found that other and greater thieves had already taken possession, that even the sun belonged to the others; Smith and Jones and Parker, druggist, banker, baker, dust of Chicago and Cincinnati and Cleveland on their shoes, doomed to die in the sun, a few dollars in the bank, enough to subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, enough to keep alive the illusion that this was paradise, that their little papier-mâché homes were castles. The uprooted ones, the empty sad folks, the old and the young folks, the folks from back home. These were my countrymen, these were the new Californians. With their bright polo shirts and sunglasses, they were in paradise, they belonged.”

Ask the Dust (1939)

Francis Bacon photo

“Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II, Antitheta (1623)

Shaun Micallef photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce photo
Gerard Bilders photo

“Many paintings are on their way, several half finished, others almost varnished and signed at the bottom. An important point is how a painting succeeds at last; an equally important point is when, how and to whom it is sold. Of these three points, the 'when', at least at this moment, is the most important for me. Then the 'how', in the sense of 'how much' [money]. To 'whom', is a question of wealth or wanton, as someone who had nothing to eat for a long time and then start to think, at whose costs am I going to fill my stomach... How mean! Painters are inferior people. Harsh!”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Veel schilderijen staan op stapel, verscheidene half gereed, de andere bijna vernist, met de naam eronder. Een voornaam punt is hoe een schilderij uitvalt, een even voornaam punt wanneer, hoe en aan wie het verkocht wordt. Van deze drie punten is het 'wanneer', op dit ogenblik tenminste, voor mij weer het voornaamste. Vervolgens het 'hoe', in de zin van 'hoeveel'. Aan 'wie', is weelde of brooddronkenheid, als van iemand die lange tijd niets te eten heeft gehad en er dan nog over gaat denken, bij wie hij het liefst zijn buik gaat vullen.. ..Hoe gemeen! Schilders zijn geringe lui. Hard!
Source: 1860's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 36 - quote from Bilders' diary, 5 March 1860, (Amsterdam)

Warren Farrell photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“Simply because it’s easier to learn to work for money, especially if fear is your primary emotion when the subject of money is discussed.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

GG Allin photo
Ihara Saikaku photo

“To think twice in every matter and follow the lead of others is no way to make money.”

Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) Japanese writer

Book II, ch. 5.
The Japanese Family Storehouse (1688)

Henry Taylor photo

“The art of living easily as to money, is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.”

Henry Taylor (1800–1886) English playwright and poet

Money.
Notes from Life (1853)

Murray N. Rothbard photo
Paulo Freire photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“In other words, a majority of people let their lack of money stop them from making a deal.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Paul Graham photo
Steve Keen photo

“The term 'capital' has two quite different meanings in economics: a sum of money, and a collection of machinery.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 6, The Holy War Over Capital, p. 130

Thomas Jefferson photo
Ervin László photo
Benjamin Franklin photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“Paper is poverty,… it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (27 May 1788) ME 7:36
1780s