Quotes about money
page 31

John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“What was needed was a policy that increased the supply of money available for use and then ensured its use. Then the state of trade would have to improve.”

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

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter XVI, The Coming of J.M. Keynes, p. 217

Klaus Kinski photo
Rutger Bregman photo
Tristram Stuart photo

“Food redistribution is one of the best win-win solutions for food waste avoidance. Food companies can often save money by donating food rather than paying the £80 or so per tonne in landfill tax and disposal costs.”

Tristram Stuart (1977) British historian

"Food redistribution is a win-win solution for food waste" https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/food-waste-redistribution-sustainable-solution, The Guardian (11 May 2012).

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot photo

“All merchandize has the two essential properties of money, to measure and to represent all value: and in this sense all merchandize is money.”

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) French economist

§ 39
Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth (1766)

Walter Bagehot photo

“The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Source: Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/lsadm10.txt (1873), Ch. II, A General View of Lombard Street

Bouck White photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“When an actor has money, he doesn't send letters but telegrams.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

“The reader might reflect that an awful lot of supposing has to take place in order for the quantity theory of money to be true.”

Part I, Chapter 5, Mechanistic Modelling, p. 95
The Death of Economics (1994)

Arthur Kekewich photo

“Any man who spends his income, whether large or small, benefits the community by putting money in circulation.”

Arthur Kekewich (1832–1907) British judge

In re Nottage (1895), L. R. 2 C. D. [1895], p. 653.

Michael Dirda photo

“Fiction is, the art of making up something. That's what it's all about, folks. Making stacks of money.”

Michael Dirda (1948) American literary critic

The Library of Foresight, edition 3 of The Trilogy by John Sai, p. iii.

Muhammad photo

“Ka'b ibn Malik reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Two hungry wolves loose among sheep do not cause as much damage as that caused to a man's deen by his greed for money and reputation."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 3, hadith number 485
Sunni Hadith

Woody Allen photo

“I WANTED nothing more than to be a foreign filmmaker, but of course I was from Brooklyn, which was not a foreign country. Through a happy accident I wound up being a foreign filmmaker because I couldn’t raise money any other way.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

As quoted in the New York Times, That’s Amore: Italy as Muse: Woody Allen on Italian Movies and ‘To Rome With Love’ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/movies/woody-allen-on-italian-movies-and-to-rome-with-love.html?_r=1&smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=MO-E-FB-SM-LIN-TAI-061912-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click, June 15, 2012.
Others

Al Gore photo

“We would not have invaded a country that did not attack us. We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families. We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Commenting to reporters in Sweden on how the US would have been different if he had won the controversial 2000 election, as quoted in "Gore: 'Absolutely no plans' to run again for president" USA Today (12 October 2005) http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-10-12-gore_x.htm

John Bright photo
Kim Il-sung photo
Justin D. Fox photo
Frances Kellor photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831 Selected Letters, ed. Roger Boesche, UofC Press 1985, p. 39 https://books.google.de/books?id=dwDWCAhP5EMC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=character.
1830s

Kenneth Minogue photo
Maddox photo

“In an effort to salvage the money I wasted on this bullshit, I ate six cups of jello, one bag of corn nuts, a Soynut bar, and a bag of jelly beans for dinner. The only thing X-TREME about this experience was the X-TREME dump I took later that night:”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Take your X-TREME marketing and shove it. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=xtreme_bullshit
The Best Page in the Universe

David Ricardo photo

“Whenever the current of money is forcibly stopped, and when money is prevented from settling at its just level, there are no limits to the possible variations of the exchange.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter VII, On Foreign Trade, p. 91

Ron Paul photo
Warren Farrell photo
Walid Jumblatt photo

“We are facing someone [Iran] who has an army, money, and a political plan for the Arab Islamic Middle East.”

Walid Jumblatt (1949) Leader of the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon

Walid Jumblatt: I Apologize to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for Comparing Snakes, Whales and Wild Beasts to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1394 (February 2007)

Heinrich Heine photo

“Money bequeathed to my wife "on the express condition that she remarry. I want at least one person to be truly bereaved by my death."”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Testamentary Will of Heinrich Heine (1856); no published source for this has been located.
Disputed

Harriet Beecher Stowe photo

“There are a handful of people whom money won't spoil, and we all count ourselves among them.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Vincent Van Gogh photo
David Lloyd George photo

“The Budget…is introduced not merely for the purpose of raising barren taxes, but taxes that are fertile, taxes that will bring forth fruit—the security of the country which is paramount in the minds of all. The provision for the aged and deserving poor—was it not time something was done? It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours—probably the richest in the world, if not the richest the world has ever seen—should allow those who have toiled all their days to end in penury and possibly starvation. It is rather hard that an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb, bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty. We cut a new path for him—an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn. We are raising money to pay for the new road—aye, and to widen it, so that 200,000 paupers shall be able to join in the march. There are so many in the country blessed by Providence with great wealth, and if there are amongst them men who grudge out of their riches a fair contribution towards the less fortunate of their fellow-countrymen they are very shabby rich men.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 145.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

David Harvey photo

“If all money capital invests in appropriation and none in actual production, than capitalism is not long for this world.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 9, Money, Credit And Finance, p. 269

Jean Paul Sartre photo
August Strindberg photo
Aubrey Beardsley photo
W. Somerset Maugham photo
David Packard photo
Dana Gioia photo
Bill Hicks photo
Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey photo

“Mr. Grey said, that he was prepared to defend the country, not only against an invasion of a foreign enemy, wishing to inculcate their own dangerous principles, which were clearly most subversive of civil society, but he would defend it, at the risk of his life, against the subjects of any government, if it was the best that human wisdom could devise; he did not however think it was candid, or by any means conciliatory, in the right hon. gentleman, on every occasion that presented itself to introduce the words "just and necessary" war. He declared he was much obliged to an hon. gentleman who had done him the honour to remember his words. He had declared, and he would declare again, that he would rather live under the most despotic monarchy, nay, even under that of the king of Prussia, or the empress of Russia, than under the present government of France. He wished the chancellor of the exchequer had descended a little from his high and haughty tone of prerogative, and had informed the House, in plain, simple, intelligible language his real opinion of the legality of the measure which ministers had thought to pursue with respect to voluntary subscriptions. As for himself, he would insist, that to raise money without the authority of parliament, for any public purpose whatsoever, was illegal; and if right hon. gentleman should insist on contrary, it would give a deeper wound the constitution than any that it had received even from that right hon. gentleman.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (26 March 1794), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXI (London: 1818), pp. 94-95.
1790s

John Fante photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“The man, whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amidst a despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more, when it became possible to carry out his design. Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to him to have not yet come, or whether, more a statesman than a general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine. When, at the beginning of [221 B. C], he fell by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar. He was still a young man--born in [247 B. C], and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year [221 B. C]; but his had already been a life of manifold experience. His first recollections pictured to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he had keenly shared that unconquered father's feelings on the Peace of Catulus (also see Treaty of Lutatius), on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the Libyan war. While yet a boy, he had followed his father to the camp; and he soon distinguished himself. His light and firmly-knit frame made him an excellent runner and fencer, and a fearless rider at full speed; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to dispense with food. Although his youth had been spent in the camp, he possessed such culture as belonged to the Phoenicians of rank in his day; in Greek, apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under the guidance of his confidant Sosilus of Sparta as to be able to compose state papers in that language. As he grew up, he entered the army of his father, to perform his first feats of arms under the paternal eye and to see him fall in battle by his side. Thereafter he had commanded the cavalry under his sister's husband, Hasdrubal, and distinguished himself by brilliant personal bravery as well as by his talents as a leader. The voice of his comrades now summoned him--the tried, although youthful general--to the chief command, and he could now execute the designs for which his father and his brother-in-law had lived and died. He took up the inheritance, and he was worthy of it. His contemporaries tried to cast stains of various sorts on his character; the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been other than covetous. But though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents. Laying aside wretched inventions which furnish their own refutation, and some things which his lieutenants, particularly Hannibal Monomachus and Mago the Sammite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the accounts regarding him which may not be justified under the circumstances, and according to the international law, of the times; and all agree in this, that he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy. He was peculiarly marked by that inventive craftiness, which forms one of the leading traits of the Phoenician character; he was fond of taking singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and stratagems of all sorts were familiar to him; and he studied the character of his antagonists with unprecedented care. By an unrivaled system of espionage--he had regular spies even in Rome--he kept himself informed of the projects of the enemy; he himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false hair, in order to procure information on some point or other. Every page of the history of this period attests his genius in strategy; and his gifts as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution, and in the unparalleled influence which as a foreign exile he exercised in the cabinets of the eastern powers. The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues--an army which never in the worst times mutinied against him. He was a great man; wherever he went, he riveted the eyes of all.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome, Volume 2 Translated by W.P. Dickson
On Hannibal the man and soldier
The History of Rome - Volume 2

“[A banker is] a man who will lend you money if you can prove to him that you don't need it.”

Joe E. Lewis (1902–1971) American singer and comedian

Quoted by Leonard Lyons in his column https://secure.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/151726578.html, 15 October 1944

Larry Wall photo

“I'd put my money where my mouth is, but my mouth keeps moving.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199704051723.JAA28035@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Hunter S. Thompson photo
William Cobbett photo

“As to the power which money gives, it is that of brute force, it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet, and of the bribed press, tongue and pen.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Letter 1, p. 36.
Advice to Young Men (1829)

David Lloyd George photo

“The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said, in future what are you going to tax when you will want more money? He also not merely assumed but stated that you could not depend upon any economy in armaments. I think that is not so. I think he will find that next year there will be substantial economy without interfering in the slightest degree with the efficiency of the Navy. The expenditure of the last few years has been very largely for the purpose of meeting what is recognised to be a temporary emergency. … It is very difficult for one nation to arrest this very terrible development. You cannot do it. You cannot when other nations are spending huge sums of money which are not merely weapons of defence, but are equally weapons of attack. I realise that, but the encouraging symptom which I observe is that the movement against it is a cosmopolitan one and an international one. Whether it will bear fruit this year or next year, that I am not sure of, but I am certain that it will come. I can see signs, distinct signs, of reaction throughout the world. Take a neighbour of ours. Our relations are very much better than they were a few years ago. There is none of that snarling which we used to see, more especially in the Press of those two great, I will not say rival nations, but two great Empires. The feeling is better altogether between them. They begin to realise they can co-operate for common ends, and that the points of co-operation are greater and more numerous and more important than the points of possible controversy.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1914/jul/23/finance-bill on the day the Austrian ultimatum was sent to Serbia (23 July 1914); The "neighbour" mentioned is Germany.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Niccolao Manucci photo
Mickey Spillane photo

“It's complicated, being an American,
Having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time.
Perhaps, after all, this is not the right subject for a poem.”

Louis Simpson (1923–2012) Jamaican poet

On the Lawn at the Villa (l. 14-16) (1980) It is not your job to like me, it is mine.
Poetry quotes

C. Wright Mills photo
Vangelis photo

“Music for me is life, I stay in my studio until ten or eleven at night and I record every day. Not for money or for albums - I just compose music.”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

https://books.google.hr/books?id=16jp_aFRHdgC
New Sounds
John Schaefer
June 1985
Spin
1
2
49
0886-3032
1985

John Cheever photo
Rachel Trachtenburg photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo
André Maurois photo
Adam Smith photo
Edgar Degas photo

“Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote in a letter of Degas to Jean-Baptiste Faure, 14 March 1877
1876 - 1895

Haruki Murakami photo
Michael Lewis photo
David Cameron photo

“The extremists are the ones who have the money, the leaders, the iconography and the propaganda machines. We need to turn the tables.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“There are men who cry out, 'We must sacrifice'. Well, let us rather ask them: Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our poor? Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make them. But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate here in a land of plenty. I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of those that are most in need. And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great chamber. The Great Society leads us along three roads—growth and justice and liberation. First is growth—the national prosperity which supports the well-being of our people and which provides the tools of our progress. I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already—in every city and countryside. This nation is flourishing. Workers are making more money than ever—with after-tax income in the past five years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent. More people are working than ever before in our history—an increase last year of two and a half million jobs. Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the past five years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year alone they had a rise of 20 percent. Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past five years it is up 40 percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Julian Huxley photo

“We all know how the size of sums of money appears to vary in a remarkable way according as they are being paid in or paid out.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

"Philosophic Ants" in The Borzoi Reader (1936) edited by Carl Van Doren, p. 548

Paul LePage photo
Jakaya Kikwete photo

“I don’t know how to get the money but if [the radar] is overpriced, definitely we deserve to be paid … They cannot take money from a poor country.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

Regarding the purchase of the inflated £28m radar from BAE Systems.
Interviews, Interview with Financial Times, 2007-10-04 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8a07e28-72a3-11dc-b7ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check1/

Dennis Kucinich photo
Andrew Ure photo
John Bright photo
Robert Burton photo

“[The rich] are indeed rather possessed by their money than possessors.”

Section 2, member 3, subsection 12, Covetousness, a Cause.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I

Sylvia Plath photo
Shahrukh Khan photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority.”

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

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter VIII, The Great Compromise, p. 92

“When I started worrying about stocks, it was the late 1930s and early 1940s and it didn't seem like a good way to make money then, either.”

Merton Miller (1923–2000) American economist

Source: Investment Gurus: A Road Map to Wealth from the World's Best Money Managers. 1999, p. 263

Dana Gioia photo

“Money. You don't know where it's been,
but you put it where your mouth is.
And it talks.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Money" http://www.danagioia.net/poems/money.htm
Poetry, The Gods of Winter (1991)

Van Morrison photo
Samuel Butler photo
Octave Mirbeau photo
Ron Paul photo
Arjuna Ranatunga photo
Michael Haneke photo

“I know very well the sorts of pressures you're under in television. I don't work in television anymore myself, but I'm constantly hearing from colleagues who present scripts to networks and are told, "The script is too complex. You have to keep it simple because the audience is dumb. You can make more money for the advertisers that way."”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

as interviewed by Richard Porton, "Collective Guilt and Individual Responsibility: An Interview with Michael Haneke," Cineaste, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 50-51

Ignatius Sancho photo
Abba Lerner photo
Edgar Bronfman, Sr. photo
Fred Phelps photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Gary Johnson photo

“I share in their outrage and the outrage is that we don’t have a system that has a level playing field. That the government picks winners and losers and in the case of Wall Street what absolutely outrages me is the fact that these people that made such incredibly bad decisions, and I’m believing that these decisions were not necessarily criminal or I think they would have been prosecuted, but that they were just horrible decisions. That they should have been rewarded with failure. Meaning they should have lost all of their money. But they didn’t loose all of their money did they? We bailed them out at the tune of a trillion bucks. You and I. You and I bailed them out. They continue to receive their bonuses and that is … that is the outrage and I share in that outrage… Government should be a level playing field where all of us have the same advantages and the same threats if you will. Implementing the Fair Tax for example throws out the entire Federal tax system. No income tax, no IRS, no business tax, no corporate tax and isn’t the fact that some people pay tax and others don’t isn’t it it the fact that some corporations pay tax and others don’t that has us outraged. It’s just not fair. Let’s implement something that totally fair and in fact is a system where you make the more you consume the more Fair Tax you’ll pay. In a Fair Tax environment you’ll be incentivised to save money.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement made to representatives of the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC)
2011-10-16
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2011/10/full-transcript-of-qa-with-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson/
2012-02-24
Economic Policy

Alan Sugar photo

“My history of lending money from banks is that they want to know the ins and outs of the backside of a duck.”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

In interview with Gordon Brown at No 10 Downing Street, as stated in The Sun (UK) newspaper, 11th December 2009.

“If I had a dollar for every time I said that, I'd be making money in a very weird way.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Do You Believe in Gosh?

St. Vincent (musician) photo
Joe Bob Briggs photo

“I think we should take money from everyone," I told her, "regardless of their ability to pay. After all, this is America.”

Joe Bob Briggs (1953) American film critic, writer, and actor; alter ego of John Bloom

La Femme Nikita review http://www.joebobbriggs.com/drivein/1991/lafemmenikita.htm

Seth Lloyd photo