Quotes about money
page 17

Leo Tolstoy photo

“Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 83

Daniel Dennett photo
Warren Farrell photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Brian W. Aldiss photo
Vivek Wadhwa photo
George Eliot photo
P.T. Barnum photo

“In fact, as a general thing, money-getters are the benefactors of our race.”

P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) American showman and businessman

Ch. 20: "Preserve your integrity" http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/moneygetting_chap21.html
Art of Money Getting (1880)

Iain Banks photo
John Fante photo
Sarah Jessica Parker photo
A. R. Rahman photo
Henry Adams photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Michael Lewis photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“In the Colonies we issue our own money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it in proper proportion to the demands of trade and industry to make the products pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating for ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay no one.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Quoted in Money and Men by Robert McCann Rice (1941) but no prior source is extant.
Misattributed

Roger Waters photo
Rick Perry photo

“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y'all would do to him in Iowa but we would treat him pretty ugly, down in Texas. I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous—or treasonous in my opinion.”

Rick Perry (1950) 14th and current United States Secretary of Energy

2011-08-16
Perry: We'd Lynch Ben Bernanke In Texas
Andrew
Sullivan
The Dish
The Daily Beast
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/08/perry-wed-lynch-ben-bernanke-in-texas.html
2011

Franco Modigliani photo
Jerry Pournelle photo
Enoch Powell photo

“The Bill … does manifest some of the major consequences. It shows first that it is an inherent consequence of accession to the Treaty of Rome that this House and Parliament will lose their legislative supremacy. It will no longer be true that law in this country is made only by or with the authority of Parliament… The second consequence … is that this House loses its exclusive control—upon which its power and authority has been built over the centuries—over taxation and expenditure. In future, if we become part of the Community, moneys received in taxation from the citizens of this country will be spent otherwise than upon a vote of this House and without the opportunity … to debate grievance and to call for an account of the way in which those moneys are to be spent. For the first time for centuries it will be true to say that the people of this country are not taxed only upon the authority of the House of Commons. The third consequence which is manifest on the face of the Bill, in Clause 3 among other places, is that the judicial independence of this country has to be given up. In future, if we join the Community, the citizens of this country will not only be subject to laws made elsewhere but the applicability of those laws to them will be adjudicated upon elsewhere; and the law made elsewhere and the adjudication elsewhere will override the law which is made here and the decisions of the courts of this realm.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1972/feb/17/european-communities-bill in the House of Commons (17 February 1972) on the Second Reading of the European Communities Bill
1970s

David Lee Roth photo

“It's not about money right now. My ambition is to further create a signature sound, a signature spirit, that makes some kind of contribution to music in general.”

David Lee Roth (1954) Rock vocalist; lead singer with Van Halen

David Barton (July 3, 1994) "Jumping at the Chance - With His Newest Album, David Lee Roth Rocks, Rolls and Moves On", Sacramento Bee, p. EN3.

Ilana Mercer photo
Dottie West photo

“I know how to make money and I'll make it.”

Dottie West (1932–1991) American country music singer

From an interview with the "Tennesseean" newspaper reporter Robert K. Oermann in 1991.

Michael Hudson (economist) photo

“The one sure mark of a con, though, is the promise of free money.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

" The $4.7 trillion pyramid: Why Social Security won't be enough to save Wall Street http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/04/0080499" in Harper's Magazine (April 2005)

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham photo

“Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or to enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature, or the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects…What, though you march form town to town, and from province to province; though you should be able to enforce a temporary and local submission, which I only suppose, not admit—how shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress, to grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent, populous in numbers, possessing valour, liberty, and resistance? This resistance to your arbitrary system of taxation might have been foreseen: it was obvious, from the nature of things and of mankind; and, above all, from the Whiggish spirit flourishing in that country. The spirit which now resists your taxation in America, is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money, in England: the same spirit which called all England on its legs, and by the Bill of Rights vindicated the English constitution: the same spirit which established the great, fundamental, essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

This glorious spirit of Whiggism animates three millions in America; who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as freemen.
Speech in the House of Lords (20 January 1775), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 134-6.

Jean Drapeau photo

“The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.”

Jean Drapeau (1916–1999) former mayor of Montreal, Quebec (1954-1957,1960-1986)

Quoted in Why Chicago didn’t want the Olympics, by Edward McClelland http://www.salon.com/2009/10/02/chicago_olympics/

Anthony Burgess photo
Paul Krugman photo

“I do not think that word “compromise” means what Mr. Ryan thinks it means. Above all, he failed to offer the one thing the White House won’t, can’t bend on: an end to extortion over the debt ceiling. Yet even this ludicrously unbalanced offer was too much for conservative activists, who lambasted Mr. Ryan for basically leaving health reform intact.Does this mean that we’re going to hit the debt ceiling? Quite possibly; nobody really knows, but careful observers are giving no better than even odds that any kind of deal will be reached before the money runs out. Beyond that, however, our current state of dysfunction looks like a chronic condition, not a one-time event. Even if the debt ceiling is raised enough to avoid immediate default, even if the government shutdown is somehow brought to an end, it will only be a temporary reprieve. Conservative activists are simply not willing to give up on the idea of ruling through extortion, and the Obama administration has decided, wisely, that it will not give in to extortion.So how does this end? How does America become governable again?”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Regarding the ongoing 2013 U.S. government shutdown
[Paul Krugman, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/14/opinion/krugman-the-dixiecrat-solution.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1381867276-0uKEJS5eBZAKIo/by2ipKQ, The Dixiecrat Solution, New York Times, October 13, 2013, October 15, 2013]
The New York Times Columns

Edward St. Aubyn photo
Edward Bellamy photo
Stephen Harper photo

“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

The Star, January 30, 2007.
2007

Ibn Khaldun photo
Naomi Klein photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“All exchange stimulates productive activity, whether exchange by gift, gambling, barter, or money transaction.”

Aaron C. Brown (1956) American financial analyst

Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006), Chapter 5, Pokernomics, p. 127

Russell Brand photo
David Ricardo photo

“In consequence of the great fear which fell upon Jaipál, who confessed he had seen death before the appointed time, he sent a deputation to the Amír soliciting peace, on the promise of his paying down a sum of money, and offering to obey any order he might receive respecting his elephants and his country. The Amir Subuktigín consented on account of mercy he felt towards those who were his vassals, or for some other reason which seemed expedient to him. But the Sultán Yamínu-d daula Mahmúd addressed the messengers in a harsh voice, and refused to abstain from battle, until he should obtain a complete victory suited to his zeal for the honour of Islám and the Musulmáns, and one which he was confident God would grant to his arms. So they returned, and Jaipál being in great alarm, again sent the most humble supplications that the battle might cease saying, "You have seen the impetuosity of the Hindus and their indifference to death, whenever any calamity befalls them, as at this moment. If therefore, you refuse to grant peace in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and prisoners, then there is no alternative for us but to mount the horse of stern determination, destroy our property, take out the eyes of our elephants, cast our children into fire, and rush out on each other with sword and spear, so that all that will be left to you to conquer and seize is stones and dirt, dead bodies, and scattered bones."”

Sabuktigin (942–997) Founder of the Ghaznavid Empire

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume II, pp. 20-21. Translation of Tarikh-i-Yamini of al-Utbi.

George W. Bush photo

“Haven't we already given money to rich people? This second tax cut's gonna do it again. Didn't we already, why are we doing it again?… shouldn't we be giving money to the middle?”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks during a 2002 White House meeting referring to Bush's second tax cut proposal, as recalled by then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. Reported in Ron Suskind (2004), The Price of Loyalty, ISBN 0-7432-5545-3.
Attributed, Private/attributed

James Howell photo

“Owe money at Easter and Lent will seem short to thee.”

James Howell (1594–1666) Anglo-Welsh historian and writer

Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660)

Ragnar Frisch photo

“I approached the problem of utility measurement in 1923 during a stay in Paris. There were three objects I had in view :
:(I) To point out the choice axioms that are implied when we think of utility as a quantity, and to define utility in a rigorous way by starting from a set of such axioms;
:(II) To develop a method of measuring utility statistically;
:(III) To apply the method to actual data.
The results of my study along these lines are contained in a paper “Sur un Problème d’Économic Pure”, published in the Series Norsk Matematisk Forenings Skrifter, Serie I, Nr 16, 1926. In this paper, the axiomatics are worked out so far as the static utility concept is concerned. The method of measurement developed is the method of isoquants, which is also outlined in Section 4 below. The statistical data to which the method was applied were sales and price statistics collected by the “Union des Coopérateurs Parisien”. From these data I constructed what I believe can be considered the marginal utility curve of money for the “average” member of the group of people forming the customers of the union. To my knowledge, this is the first marginal utility curve of money ever published.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Frisch (1932) New Methods of Measuring Marginal Utility. Mohr, Tübingen. p. 2-3: Quoted in: Dagsvik, John K., Steinar Strøm, and Zhiyang Jia. " A stochastic model for the utility of income http://www.ssb.no/a/publikasjoner/pdf/DP/dp358.pdf." (2003).
1930s

Fritz Leiber photo
Yogi Berra photo
G. Edward Griffin photo

“The very wise and wealthy financiers of the world--going way back, even before Rothschild's time--have observed that the world was a pretty rocky place to live in, and that nations were always fighting over something or other, there was always somebody who was trying to conquer somebody else, and wars were universal. Too bad about that, but that's the way it is. So we--the bankers--found out that if we loan money to them that we'll get paid back - they don't question what the interest rate is because they're fighting a war! And if they can win the war they can just plunder the victim and pay us whatever we want out of the plunder - it doesn't cost them anything really. Then the issue comes up of what happens if one of these nations decides not to pay us? Ah! The answer is very simple: if they refuse to pay us back we'll finance an opposing nation, a revolutionary group somewhere else to become an enemy of that nation and attack it, and destroy it, invade it. We'll create another war, in other words, in order to get our money back, we'll finance this side to attack that side. And so, by financing all sides in a war, and keeping the world divided up into warring fractions so that no one unit is particularly stronger than the other, the banks can continue to finance all sides of wars forever, and always collect their interest, because they have the ability of putting one nation against another nation against another nation to collect their debts.”

G. Edward Griffin (1931) American conspiracy theorist, film producer, author, and political lecturer

From the documentary Corporate Fascism: The Destruction of America's Middle Class (2011) http://www.youtube.com/embed/hTbvoiTJKIs?autoplay=1&start=2094&end=2183

Alastair Reynolds photo

“The less of one's life one must exchange for money, the more freedom one may enjoy.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 17 : Success Redefined, p. 197

Béla H. Bánáthy photo

“We cannot improve or restructure a horse and buggy into a spacecraft regardless of how much money and effort we put into it.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 121; Banathy is self-citing a 1991 publication

Wesley Willis photo

“My mother smokes that crack like a cigar / She had a good time at it / She jacks my brother for dope money / She does this by threatening him with a Smith and Wesson”

Wesley Willis (1963–2003) American singer-songwriter

My Mother Smokes Crack Rocks
Lyrics, Solo
Variant: "I smoke my crack pipe everyday / I have a good time at it / I jack my mother for dope money / I do it by threatening her life with a semi-automatic" - I Smoke Weed

François Bernier photo
Samuel Butler (poet) photo

“With books and money plac'd for show
Like nest-eggs to make clients lay,
And for his false opinion pay.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto III, line 624
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)

Lysander Spooner photo

“But the investors who really follow the market, the ones who call up all the time, ninety percent of them really don't care whether they make money or not.”

George Goodman (1930–2014) American author and economics commentator

Source: The Money Game (1968), Chapter 5, You Mean That's What Money Really Is?, p. 53

John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Jean-Baptiste Say photo

“At Newfoundland, it is said, that dried cod performs the office of money”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XXI, Section II, p. 221

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“I had learnt at the onset not to carry on public work with borrowed money.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Part II, Chapter 19, Natal Indian Congress
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

David Foster Wallace photo
Stephen Tobolowsky photo
William Ernest Henley photo
Martin Amis photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Steve Jobs photo

“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money.
That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.”

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

Interview Steve Jobs: Visionary Entrepreneur by Santa Clara Valley Historical Association (1994) Steve Jobs: Visionary Entrepreneur http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/#!steve-jobs-film/c1x1c, Silicon Valley Historical Association] Steve Jobs: Secrets of Life quote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw, Santa Clara Valley Historical Association, YouTube]
1990s

George W. Bush photo
Alan Moore photo

“There is an inverse relationship between imagination and money.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

About the film adaptation of V for Vendetta, in an MTV interview "Alan Moore : The Last Angry Man" http://www.mtv.com/shared/movies/interviews/m/moore_alan_060315/

Steve Jobs photo

“I think it a greater theft to Rob the dead of their Praise, then the Living of their Money.”

Edward Ravenscroft (1654–1707) English dramatist

Preface to Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia (1686); quoted in The Shakespeare Allusion-Book: A Collection of Allusions to Shakespeare from 1591-1700, vol 2, ed. John Munro (1932).

Ron Paul photo

“I think everybody has the same concerns about helping people when they're having trouble. The question is whether it should be done through coercion, or voluntary means, or local government. And I opt out from the federal government doing it, because that involves central economic planning. So even if we accept the gentleman's moral premise, in a practical way it's a total failure. We'd have been better off taking the amount of money and giving every single family $20,000, and they'd all been better off, than the way we did it. We bought all these trailer homes and they sat out in the open, so the whole thing is insane, it's a total waste. And besides, the reason I don't like these federal government programs, it encourages people like me to build on the beach. I have a house on the beach in the gulf of Mexico. But why don't I assume my own responsibility, why doesn't the market tell me what the insurance rates should be? Because it would be very very high. But, because we want it subsidized, we ask the people of Arizona to subsidize my insurance so I can take greater danger, my house gets blown down, and then the people of Arizona rebuild it?! My statement back during the time of Katrina, which was a rather risky political statement: why do the people of Arizona have to pay for me to take my risk… less people will be exposed to danger if you don't subsidize risky behavior… I think it's a very serious mistake to think that central economic planning and forcibly transferring wealth from people who don't take risks to people who take risks is a proper way to go.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The Charles Goyette Show, March 30, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6RMVUOaeA8
2000s, 2006-2009

Thomas Chandler Haliburton photo

“Everything has altered its dimensions, except the world we live in. The more we know of that, the smaller it seems. Time and distance have been abridged, remote countries have become accessible, and the antipodes are upon visiting terms. There is a reunion of the human race; and the family resemblance now that we begin to think alike, dress alike, and live alike, is very striking. The South Sea Islanders, and the inhabitants of China, import their fashions from Paris, and their fabrics from Manchester, while Rome and London supply missionaries to the ‘ends of the earth,’ to bring its inhabitants into ‘one fold, under one Shepherd.’ Who shall write a book of travels now? Livingstone has exhausted the subject. What field is there left for a future Munchausen? The far West and the far East have shaken hands and pirouetted together, and it is a matter of indifference whether you go to the moors in Scotland to shoot grouse, to South America to ride and alligator, or to Indian jungles to shoot tigers-there are the same facilities for reaching all, and steam will take you to either with the equal ease and rapidity. We have already talked with New York; and as soon as our speaking-trumpet is mended shall converse again. ‘To waft a sigh from Indus to the pole,’ is no longer a poetic phrase, but a plain matter of fact of daily occurrence. Men breakfast at home, and go fifty miles to their counting-houses, and when their work is done, return to dinner. They don’t go from London to the seaside, by way of change, once a year; but they live on the coast, and go to the city daily. The grand tour of our forefathers consisted in visiting the principle cities of Europe. It was a great effort, occupied a vast deal of time, cost a large sum of money, and was oftener attended with danger than advantage. It comprised what was then called, the world: whoever had performed it was said to have ‘seen the world,’ and all that it contained. The Grand Tour now means a voyage round the globe, and he who has not made it has seen nothing.”

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian-British politician, judge, and author

The Season-Ticket, An Evening at Cork 1860 p. 1-2.

John Updike photo

“[Harry listening to car radio] …he resents being made to realise, this late, that the songs of his life were as moronic as the rock the brainless kids now feed on, or the Sixties and Seventies stuff that Nelson gobbled up – all of it designed for empty heads and overheated hormones, an ocean white with foam, and listening to it now is like trying to eat a double banana split the way he used to. It's all disposable, cooked up to turn a quick profit. They lead us down the garden path, the music manufacturers, then turn around and lead the next generation down with a slightly different flavour of glop.
Rabbit feels betrayed. He was reared in a world where war was not strange but change was: the world stood still so you could grow up in it. He knows when the bottom fell out. When they closed down Kroll's, Kroll's that had stood in the centre of Brewer all those years, bigger than a church, older than a courthouse, right at the head of Weiser Square there,… […] So when the system just upped one summer and decided to close Kroll's down, just because shoppers had stopped coming in because the downtown had become frightening to white people, Rabbit realised the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll's could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God himself.”

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

David Graeber photo
Jane Roberts photo
Anton Chekhov photo
Francis Escudero photo

“Most business executives accept that bribes and grease money are costs of doing business in "soft "states.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Gore Vidal photo

“Americans are farcical when it comes to force majeure and money!
Two things that they worship.
You can't expect a democracy from a society like this.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2010s, "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia" (2013)

Gangubai Hangal photo
Van Morrison photo

“Put your money where your mouth is
Then we can get something going
In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime
And leave one or two cards showing.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Hard Nose the Highway
Song lyrics, Hard Nose the Highway (1973)

Douglas Coupland photo
John Bright photo
Roger Ebert photo
Oksana Shachko photo
Bernie Sanders photo

“If we expanded Medicaid [to] everybody. Give everybody a Medicaid card—we would be spending such an astronomical sum of money that, you know, we would bankrupt the nation.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking in 1987, from Medicaid for All Would 'Bankrupt the Nation,' Warns Bernie Sanders—In 1987 http://reason.com/blog/2017/09/14/bernie-sanders-medicaid-for-all-bankrupt by Peter Suderman, Reason.com (14 September 2017)
1980s

Jimmy Hoffa photo

“Sure, we loaned money to build hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. So what? Las Vegas borrowers were good customers.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 7, Gangsters and the "Irish Mafia", p. 119

Francis Escudero photo
Slim Burna photo

“aii, see Plenty money, means plenty honey
na so dem say money is the root of all evil
but nowadays na di fruit of the tree weh deh bless people”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

"Plenty Money" (track 7)
I'm On Fire (2013)

Roger Stone photo