Quotes about money
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Muhammad Ali photo

“I think Terrell will catch hell at the sound of the bell.
He's going around saying that he's a championship-fighter,
but when he meets me he fall 20 pound lighter.
He thinks that he's the real heavy weight champ
but when he meets me, he'll just be a tramp
Now I'm not sayin' just to be funny, but I'm fightin' Ernie because he needs the money.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

About Ernie Terrell before their February 1967 boxing match, - ( YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVZYo2MYmfg
Source: https://books.google.ca/books?id=6ClZDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=I+think+Terrell+will+catch+hell+at+the+sound+of+the+bell&source=bl&ots=2atsVuDXae&sig=ACfU3U0qSka952BOrSsGqAg13ji8vvdxPw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiK1sa854jvAhWY_J4KHe0xAf0Q6AEwEnoECAQQAw#v=onepage&q=I%20think%20Terrell%20will%20catch%20hell%20at%20the%20sound%20of%20the%20bell&f=false Ali: The Official Portrait of "The Greatest" of All Time

Shahrukh Khan photo
Shahrukh Khan photo
T. B. Joshua photo

“Miracles, signs, wonders, deliverance and healing cannot be exchanged with money.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Speaking during his 2014 Colombia Crusade - "TB Joshua Lights Up Colombia, Fills Olympic Stadium" http://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-religion-byo-50760.html Bulawayo 24, Zimbabwe (July 17 2014)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Stefan Zweig photo
J. Paul Getty photo

“If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.”

J. Paul Getty (1892–1977) American industrialist

As quoted by Robert Lenzner in his book, The Great Getty (1985)

Bertrand Russell photo
Lewis Hamilton photo

“Sure every driver has his value and you want to be respected but again money is not something that drives me.”

Lewis Hamilton (1985) British racing driver

"Hamilton makes pledge to McLaren" http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/6275778.stm, BBC.co.uk, 6 July 2007

Francis of Assisi photo
Frederick II of Prussia photo
Martin Luther photo
Malcolm X photo
LeBron James photo

“No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is tough.”

LeBron James (1984) American basketball player

LeBron James Responds to Racial Vandalism: ‘Being Black in America Is Tough’, NY Times, June 1, 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/sports/lebron-racist-graffiti-home.html?_r=0,

Greg Giraldo photo
Greg Egan photo
George Orwell photo

“There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.”

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 4; a record of a remark by Orwell's fellow tramp Boris

William Saroyan photo

“How did money ever happen? What's it mean? What's it for?”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Jim Dandy : Fat Man in a Famine (1947)

Patch Adams photo
George Orwell photo
John Trudell photo
"Weird Al" Yankovic photo

“If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it.”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

"This Is the Life", Dare to Be Stupid (1984).
Song lyrics

Socrates photo
George Lincoln Rockwell photo

“Jews talk a lot about God. But actually their god, just like Marx said, is money. Cash!”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

Interview with Alex Haley

Elvis Presley photo
Aristotle Onassis photo

“If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.”

Aristotle Onassis (1906–1975) Greek shipping magnate

Quoted in Barbara Rowes, The Book of Quotes (1979)

Joseph De Maistre photo

“False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.”

Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821) Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat

Les fausses opinions ressemblent à la fausse monnaie qui est frappée d'abord par de grands coupables et dépensée ensuite par d'honnêtes gens qui perpétuent le crime sans savoir ce qu'ils font.
Les soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Ch. I

Cosimo de' Medici photo

“All those things [meaning works of art] have given me the greatest satisfaction and contentment because they are not only for the honor of God but are likewise for my own remembrance. For fifty years, I have done nothing else but earn money and spend money; and it became clear that spending money gives me greater pleasure than earning it.”

Cosimo de' Medici (1389–1464) First ruler of the Medici political dynasty

Attributed to Cosimo de' Medici by Salviati; as cited in Taylor, F.H. (1948). The taste of angels, a history of art collecting from Rameses to Napoleon. Boston: Little, Brown. pp. 65–66.

George Orwell photo
George Orwell photo

“And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.”

opening lines, I Corinthians xiii (adapted)
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
Context: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. … And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.

Jean Jacques Rousseau photo

“The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Book I
Context: I love liberty, and I loathe constraint, dependence, and all their kindred annoyances. As long as my purse contains money it secures my independence, and exempts me from the trouble of seeking other money, a trouble of which I have always had a perfect horror; and the dread of seeing the end of my independence, makes me proportionately unwilling to part with my money. The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.

George Orwell photo

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

opening lines, I Corinthians xiii (adapted)
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
Context: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. … And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.

John Maynard Keynes photo

“The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease”

as quoted in "Keynes and the Ethics of Capitalism" by Robert Skidelsy http://www.webcitation.org/query?id=1256603608595872&url=www.geocities.com/monedem/keyn.html
Essays in Persuasion (1931), Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930)
Context: When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease … But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.

George Orwell photo

“What now strikes us as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility; they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Charles Dickens" (1939)
Context: Dickens's attitude is easily intelligible to an Englishman, because it is part of the English puritan tradition, which is not dead even at this day. The class Dickens belonged to, at least by adoption, was growing suddenly rich after a couple of centuries of obscurity. It had grown up mainly in the big towns, out of contact with agriculture, and politically impotent; government, in its experience, was something which either interfered or persecuted. Consequently it was a class with no tradition of public service and not much tradition of usefulness. What now strikes us as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility; they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists.

John D. Rockefeller photo

“I believe the power to make money is a gift of God … to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind.”

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

Interview with William Hoster, quoted in God's Gold (1932) by John T. Flynn
Context: I believe the power to make money is a gift of God … to be developed and used to the best of our ability for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.

Greta Thunberg photo

“Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we all have created. But that is just another convenient lie. Because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people – some companies and some decision-makers in particular – have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.”

Teen activist tells Davos elite they're to blame for climate crisis, CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/25/europe/greta-thunberg-davos-world-economic-forum-intl/index.html (25 January 2019)
Cited in No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, Penguin Books, 2019, pages 17-18 (ISBN 9780141991740).
2019, World Economic Forum (January 2019)

Jonathan Sacks photo
Milton Friedman photo

“The great enemy of human freedom is the Government. By taking money out of our pockets and spending it, it destroys our freedom.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

The National Times, Australia, (March 1, 1977)

Chris Hedges photo
George Orwell photo

“Before, he had fought against the money code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself—to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground.”

He liked to think of the lost people, the under-ground people: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself forever.
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 10

George Orwell photo
George Orwell photo
George Orwell photo
George Orwell photo
The Notorious B.I.G. photo
George Orwell photo
Robert Lewandowski photo

“Money is important, but I didn't get carried away because ... I remember what it was like not to have the basics. However, I am glad that I was able to fulfill my childhood dreams.”

Robert Lewandowski (1988) Polish association football player

"Trzeba czasem zdjąć zbroję. Wywiad z Robertem Lewandowskim" https://twojstyl.pl/artykul/trzeba-czasem-zdjac-zbroje-robert-lewndowski,aid,824 (August 25, 2020)

Hamis Kiggundu photo

“Money is only one of the tools of survival; it stands useless if it can’t save people’s lives. After all, no man is an island. I always help where and wherever I can since my individual personal survival is only limited to a very narrow scope of basic needs.”

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

Quoted when donating 15,000 COVID-19 Vaccine doses to the government of Uganda.
2020s
Source: [2021-03-10, Tycoon Kiggundu donates sh530m to procure Covid-19 vaccine, https://www.newvision.co.ug/articledetails/107712, 2021-10-03, New Vision, en-US]

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Kanye West photo

“Always said if I rapped, I'd say somethin' significant
But now I'm rapping 'bout money, hoes, and rims again.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Breathe In Breathe Out
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

Lil Peep photo

“Gettin' to the cake now
All the hate don't phase me
All the money that I make now
I'll never let it change me”

Lil Peep (1996–2017) American rapper

Source: Song Benz Truck

T. Harv Eker photo

“Money will only make you more of what you already are.”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

Jim Butcher photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“The love of money is the root of all evil."

The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

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

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Children About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Don't

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)
Context: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. … Is there no other way the world may live?

George Washington photo

“Paper money has had the effect in your state that it will ever have, to ruin commerce, oppress the honest, and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

Letter to Jabez Bowen https://founders.archives.gov/GEWN-04-04-02-0428 (9 January 1787)
1780s

Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Gustave Flaubert photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Molière photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Bob Marley photo

“Money can't buy you life”

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

Variant: Money can't buy life.

Mario Puzo photo

“The lawyer with the briefcase can steal more money than the man with the gun.”

Variant: Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks."

-Don Vito Corleone
Source: The Godfather

Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“If you lose money you lose much,
If you lose friends you lose more,
If you lose faith you lose all.”

My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns 1936-62

Oswald Spengler photo
George Harrison photo
Mark Twain photo

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

This appears in Twain's posthumous The Refuge of the Derelicts (1905), but it had already been published by other writers.
The earliest citation found in Google Books is a 1872 article by Richard Bowker: "Our Crime Against Crimes" https://books.google.com/books?id=YZgBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA68&dq=The+lack+of+money+is+the+root+of+all+evil&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWi5DE1crLAhUI3mMKHeSdB0YQ6AEIKzAB#v=onepage&q=%22lack%20of%20money%22&f=false, in The Herald of Health, vol. 19 no. 2, New York: Wood & Holbrook, February 1872. The saying is placed within quotation marks, perhaps indicating that it was already well-known.
A precursor is found in an article from 1859 https://books.google.com/books?id=gpdEAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA209&dq=The+lack+of+money+is+the+root+of+all+evil&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWi5DE1crLAhUI3mMKHeSdB0YQ6AEINTAD#v=onepage&q=%22lack%20of%20gold%22&f=false: It is very well to repeat, parrot-like, the old axiom that “the love of gold is the root of all evil;” but it is very certain that in truth—the lack of gold is the great incentive to crime.
Disputed

Karl Marx photo

“Ifis the bond binding me tolife, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universalof?”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844/The Communist Manifesto

Bob Marley photo
Mark Twain photo
John Waters photo

“Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Variant: [W]hat I like best is staying home and reading. Being rich is not about how many homes you own. It’s the freedom to pick up any book you want without looking at the price and wondering whether you can afford it.
Source: Role Models

Oscar Wilde photo
Mitch Albom photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Ronald Reagan photo
Mark Twain photo
Arnold Schwarzenegger photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“And when it comes to money, high emotions tend to lower financial intelligence.”

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!

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Only sick music makes money today.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Steve Martin photo
Nelson Algren photo

“Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don't have to do it by the yard. By the inch it's a cinch. And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.”

In jail, Cross-Country Kline to Dove Linkhorn.
Source: A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
Context: But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Never let nobody talk you into shaking another man's jolt. And never you cop another man's plea. I've tried 'em all and I know. They don't work. / Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don't have to do it by the yard. By the inch it's a cinch. And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.

Jack Kerouac photo