Quotes about wealth
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“In a class system, the social hierarchy is based primarily upon differences in monetary wealth and income. Social classes are not sharply marked off from each other, nor are they demarcated by tangible boundaries. Unlike estates, they have no legal standing, individuals of all classes being in principle equal before the law. Consequently, there are no legal restraints on the movement of individuals and families from one class to another… Unlike caste, social classes are not organized, closed groups. Rather, they are aggregates of persons with similar amounts of wealth and property, and similar sources of income.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Class and society (1959), p. 15; as cited in: Ronald J. Samuda (1998) Psychological Testing of American Minorities: Issues and Consequences. p. 47.

Family, Law, Personality

“Many first possess wealth, and are then possessed by it.”

Ludwig Klages (1872–1956) German psychologist and philosopher

Source: Rhythmen und Runen (1944), p. 253

“The highest and ultimate personality values are declared to be independent of contrasts like rich and poor, healthy and sick, etc. The world had become accustomed to considering the social hierarchy, based on status, wealth, vital strength, and power, as an exact image of the ultimate values of morality and personality. The only way to disclose the discovery of anew and higher sphere of being and life, of the “kingdom of God” whose order is independent of that worldly and vital hierarchy, was to stress the vanity of the old values in this higher order.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 98

Life, God, World, Way

“Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.”

Friedrich Engels The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man

The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (1876) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/quotes/index.htm

Nature, Sense

“There was an NPR story this morning, about the indigenous peoples of Australia, which might make a good column. Apparently they want to preserve their culture, language, and religion because they're slowly disappearing, which is certainly understandable. But, for some reason, they also want more stuff — better education, housing, etc. — from the Australian government. Isn't it odd that it never occurs to such groups that maybe, just maybe, the reason their cultures are evaporating is that they get too much of that stuff already? Indeed, I'm at a loss as to how mastering algebra and biology will make aboriginal kids more likely to believe — oh, I dunno — that hallucinogenic excretions from a frog have spiritual value. And I'm at a loss as to how better clinics and hospitals will do anything but make the shamans and medicine men look more useless. And now that I think about it, that's the point I was trying to get at a few paragraphs ago, when I was talking about the symbiotic relationship between freedom and the hurly-burly of life. Cultures grow on the vine of tradition. These traditions are based on habits necessary for survival, and day-to-day problem solving. Wealth, technology, and medicine have the power to shatter tradition because they solve problems.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

( August 15, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20010105/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg081501.shtml) <br class="br">2000s, 2001

Life, Men, People, Education

“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live. With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland - happy, vigorous, spiritual - that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved. One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilisation. Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day. So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers. We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner. We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.”

Éamon de Valera (1882–1975) 3rd President of Ireland

Radio broadcast http://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/eamon-de-valera/719124-address-by-mr-de-valera/, "On Language & the Irish Nation" (17 March 1943), often called "The Ireland that we dreamed of" speech

Life, Wisdom, Men, God

“These facts and figures must serve as an eye-opener to the people of Mysore. I refer to them here not because I have any hopes of our reaching the levels of prosperity of the two Colonies, but because it will do us good to know what organization and human endeavour are capable of achieving under favourable conditions. / The nationality of our people rests on a religious and fatalistic basis, not on an economic basis, as in the West. There are still people among us who believe that the golden age was in the past, the world is on the down-grade and the old-word conditions might yet be reproduced some day. The Hindu ideal of life is that this world is a preparation for the next and not a place to stay in and make ourselves comfortable. We are devoted to past ideals, although, out of necessity or from prospect of personal gain, we have partly taken to Western methods of work and business. There is a yearning for the old ideals and a half-hearted acquiescence in the new and, on the whole, the genius of the people is for standing still. / If we are to follow in the wake of other countries in the pursuit of material prosperity, we must give up aimless activities and bring our ideals into line with the standards of the West, namely, to spread education in all grades, multiply occupations and increase production and wealth. All other activities should conform themselves to the economic idea.”

Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya (1860–1962) Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore

148-149
[Speeches by Sir M. Visvesvaraya, K.C.I.E, https://archive.org/details/VisvesvarayaSpeeches, 1917, Bangalore Government Press, 148]

Life, People, Age, World

“Much individual enterprise in industry does not make for industrial progress. A larger and larger proportion of the energy given out in trade competition is consumed in violent warfare between trade rivals and is not represented either in advancement of industrial arts or in increase of material wealth.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

Section 11, p. 418-419
The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development

Art

“My conscience is my crown,
Contented thoughts my rest;
My heart is happy in itself,
My bliss is in my breast.

Enough I reckon wealth;
A mean the surest lot,
That lies too high for base contempt,
Too low for envy's shot.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

Source: Content and Rich, Line 9; p. 57.

Happiness, Heart, Envy

“We have become like the most primitive Palaeolithic man, once more global wanderers, but information gatherers rather than food gatherers. From now on the source of food, wealth and life itself will be information.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1990s and beyond, "The Agenbite of Outwit" (1998)

Life, Food

“The second corruption of the state is oligarchy (oligos = few), in which the military elite is narrowed down to a few ruling families of immense wealth and prestige, who now openly flaunt their wealth and possessions.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

The Drunken Helmsman, p. 97
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Family

“If the progressing rationality of advanced industrial society tends to liquidate, as an “irrational rest,” the disturbing elements of Time and Memory, it also tends to liquidate the disturbing rationality contained in this irrational rest. Recognition and relation to the past as present counteracts the functionalization of thought by and in the established reality. It militates against the closing of the universe of discourse and behavior it renders possible the development of concepts which destabilize and transcend the closed universe by comprehending it as historical universe. Confronted with the given society as object of its reflection, critical thought becomes historical consciousness as such, it is essentially judgment. Far from necessitating an indifferent relativism, it searches in the real history of man for the criteria of truth and falsehood, progress and regression. The mediation of the past with the present discovers the factors which made the facts, which determined the war of life, which established the masters and the servants; it projects the limits and the alternatives. When this critical consciousness speaks, it speaks “le langage de la connaissance” (Roland Barthes) which breaks open a closed universe of discourse and its petrified structure. The key terms of this language are not hypnotic nouns which evoke endlessly the same frozen predicates. They rather allow of an open development; they even unfold their content in contradictory predicates. The Communist Manifesto provides a classical example. Here the two key terms, Bourgeoisie and Proletariat, each “govern” contrary predicates. The “bourgeoisie” is the subject of technical progress, liberation, conquest of nature, creation of social wealth, and of the perversion and destruction of these achievements. Similarly, the "proletariat” carries the attributes of total oppression and of the total defeat of oppression. Such dialectical relation of opposites in and by the proposition is rendered possible by the recognition of the subject as an historical agent whose identity constitutes itself in and against its historical practice, in and against its social reality. The discourse develops and states the conflict between the thing and its function, and this conflict finds linguistic expression in sentences which join contradictory predicates in a logical unit—conceptual counterpart of the objective reality. In contrast to all Orwellian language, the contradiction is demonstrated, made explicit, explained, and denounced.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 99-100

Life, War, Truth, Behavior

“Nine months ago, our campaign began. And when it began, we had no political organization, no money, and not much name recognition outside of the state of Vermont. A lot has happened in nine months.
And what has happened is, I think, the American people have responded to a series of basic truths, and that is that we have today a campaign finance system which is corrupt, which is undermining American democracy, which allows Wall Street and billionaires to pour huge sums of money into the political process to elect the candidates of their choice.
And aligned with a corrupt campaign finance system is a rigged economy. And that's an economy where ordinary Americans are working longer hours for low wagers. They are worried to death about the future of their kids. And yet they are seeing almost all new income and all new wealth going to the top 1 percent.
And then in addition to that, the American people are looking around and they see a broken criminal justice system. They see more people in jail in the United States of America than any other country on earth, 2.2 million. We're spending $80 billion a year locking up fellow Americans.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2010s, 2016, Democratic Presidential Debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (11 February 2016)

Death, Money, People, Truth

“The doctrine of the Essens is this: That all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls, and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for; and when they send what they have dedicated to God into the temple, they do not offer sacrifices because they have more pure lustrations of their own; on which account they are excluded from the common court of the temple, but offer their sacrifices themselves; yet is their course of life better than that of other men; and they entirely addict themselves to husbandry. It also deserves our admiration, how much they exceed all other men that addict themselves to virtue, and this in righteousness; and indeed to such a degree, that as it hath never appeared among any other men, neither Greeks nor barbarians, no, not for a little time, so hath it endured a long while among them. This is demonstrated by that institution of theirs, which will not suffer any thing to hinder them from having all things in common; so that a rich man enjoys no more of his own wealth than he who hath nothing at all. There are about four thousand men that live in this way, and neither marry wives, nor are desirous to keep servants; as thinking the latter tempts men to be unjust, and the former gives the handle to domestic quarrels; but as they live by themselves, they minister one to another. They also appoint certain stewards to receive the incomes of their revenues, and of the fruits of the ground; such as are good men and priests, who are to get their corn and their food ready for them. They none of them differ from others of the Essens in their way of living, but do the most resemble those Dacae who are called Polistae [dwellers in cities].”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 18.1.5
Antiquities of the Jews

Life, Men, God, Food

“I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting tragedy. We must also act to prevent the deception of the American consumer—requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their contents—all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed—and keeping harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores. It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention. We must change to master change. I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch, to modernize the relations between city and state and nation. A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our transportation activities. The present structure—35 government agencies, spending $5 billion yearly—makes it almost impossible to serve either the growing demands of this great nation or the needs of the industry, or the right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality. I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of sound—in excess of 2,000 miles per hour. I propose to examine our federal system-the relation between city, state, nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to fulfill the dreams of the American people. As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life without being obligated to a few large contributors. Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic restriction on contributions—to prohibit the endless proliferation of committees, bringing local and state committees under the act—to attach strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of contributions—and to broaden the participation of the people, through added tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the candidate of their choice.”

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)

Life, Men, People, Penalty

“Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry. The political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs as they flee to Mexico, China and other countries all around the world. It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people. I'm doing this for the people and the movement and we will take back this country for you and we will make America great again. I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Closing argument for America (4 November 2016)
Source: 2010s, 2016, November, Lines recycled from Trump's campaign rally in West Palm Beach, FL (10/13/2016)

Money, People, World, Decision

“Those that have wealth must be watchful and wary,
Power, alas! naught but misery brings!”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and writer

I'd be a Butterfly, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Today there is a new class hostile to business in general, and especially to large corporations. As a group, you find them mainly in the very large and growing public sector and in the media. They share a disinterest in personal wealth, a dislike for the free-market economy, and a conviction that society may best be improved through greater governmental participation in the country's economic life. They are the media. They are the educational system. Their dislike for the free-market economy originates in their inability to exercise much influence over it so as to produce change. In its place they would prefer a system in which there is a very large political component. This is because the new class has a great deal of influence in politics. Thus, through politics, they can exercise a direct and immediate influence on the shape of our society and the direction of national affairs.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

1970s, Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978)

Life, Hostility, Education, Exercises

“The road ahead bears many challenges and now more than ever do the people of our community need a limited government that allows the people to do what they do best … to build their own wealth.”

Robert Agresta (1983)

Scribd:Robert Agresta Inauguration speech Quoted in Mayor & Council Meeting of January 2009. http://www.scribd.com/full/54569111?access_key=key-11gd71r31loly41co5n5

People, Communication

“I feel no care of coin,
Well-doing is my wealth;
My mind to me an empire is,
While grace affordeth health.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

Source: Content and Rich, Line 25; p. 58.

Health, Feeling

““But you can be sure there are pockets of wealth and influence, and I’m willing to wager that a few people are wealthier and more influential than they were before.”
“That’s always the way with disasters,” I said.
“What?”
“They’re never bad news for everyone. Something nasty always rises to the top.””

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 13 (p. 208).

People, Way

“The Arabs made a profession of robbing and murdering the non-Muslims in the name of Allah, but they called it jihad. Egypt and Iran were the early casualties. It was the pillaged wealth and abducted daughters and sisters of the foreign nations which lent the golden touch to this Arab era.”

Anwar Shaikh (1928–2006) British Pakistani writer

Anwar Shaikh, Islam, The Arab National Movement, p. 54. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Sister, Daughters

“The presence of the kings of Islam is a great blessing from Allah… You should know that the country of Hindustan is a large land. In olden days, the kings of Islam had struggled hard and for long in order to conquer this foreign country. They could do it only in several turns…
Every (Muslim) king got mosques erected in his territory, and created madrasas. Muslims of Arabia and Ajam (non-Arab Muslim lands) migrated from their own lands and arrived in these territories. They became agents for the publicity and spread of Islam here. Uptil now their descendants are firm in the ways of Islam…Among the non-Muslim communities, one is that of the Marhatah (Maratha). They have a chief. For some time past, this community has been raising its head, and has become influential all over Hindustan…
…It is easy to defeat the Marhatah community, provided the ghãzîs of Islam gird up their loins and show courage…
In the countryside between Delhi and Agra, the Jat community used to till the land. In the reign of Shahjahan, this community had been ordered not to ride on horses, or keep muskets with them, or build fortresses for themselves. The kings that came later became careless, and this community has used the opportunity for building many forts, and collecting muskets…
In the reign of Muhammad Shah, the impudence of this community crossed all limits. And Surajmal, the cousin of Churaman, became its leader. He took to rebellion. Therefore, the city of Bayana which was an ancient seat of Islam, and where the Ulama and the Sufis had lived for seven hundred years, has been occupied by force and terror, and Muslims have been turned out of it with humiliation and hurt…
…Whatever influence and prestige is left with the kingship at present, is wielded by the Hindus. For no one except them is there in the ranks of managers and officials. Their houses are full of wealth of all varieties. Muslims live in a state of utter poverty and deprivation. The story is long and cannot be summarised. What I mean to say is that the country of Hindustan has passed under the power of non-Muslims. In this age, except your majesty, there is no other king who is powerful and great, who can defeat the enemies, and who is farsighted and experienced in war. It is your majesty’s bounden duty (farz-i-ain) to invade Hindustan, to destroy the power of the Marhatahs, and to free the down-and-out Muslims from the clutches of non-Muslims. Allah forbid, if the power of the infidels remains in its present position, Muslims will renounce Islam and not even a brief period will pass before Muslims become such a community as will no more know how to distinguish between Islam and non-Islam. This will be a great tragedy. Due to the grace of Allah, no one except your majesty has the capacity for preventing this tragedy from taking place.
We who are the servants of Allah and who recognise the Prophet as our saviour, appeal to you in the name of Allah that you should turn your holy attention to this direction and face the enemies, so that a great merit is added to the roll of your deeds in the house of Allah, and your name is included in the list of mujãhidîn fi Sabîlallah (warriors in the service of Allah). May you acquire plunder beyond measure, and may the Muslims be freed from the stranglehold of the infidels. I seek refuge in Allah when I say that you should not act like Nadir Shah who oppressed and suppressed the Muslims, and went away leaving the Marhatahs and the Jats whole and prosperous.
The enemies have become more powerful after Nadir Shah, the army of Islam has disintegrated, and the empire of Delhi has become childrens’ play. Allah forbid, if the infidels continue as at present, and Muslims get (further) weakened, the very name of Islam will get wiped out.
…When your fearsome army reaches a place where Muslims and non-Muslims live together, your administrators must take particular care. They must be instructed that those weak Muslims who live in the countryside should be taken to towns and cities. Next, some such administrators should be appointed in towns and cities as would see to it that the properties of Muslims are not plundered, and the honour of no Muslim is compromised.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Letter to Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ruler of Afghanistan. Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, p.83 ff.
From his letters

War, Children, Age, Way

“She said “Oh rather thank thy God,
My lot is not thine own.
How would my weary feet rejoice
Like thine to walk and run
Over the soft and fragrant grass,
Beneath yon cheerful sun.
And yet I trust to God's good will
My spirit is resign'd;
Though sore my sickness, it is borne
At least with patient mind.
Though noble be my father's name,
And vast my father's wealth;
He would give all, could he but give
His only child thy health!
Ah, judge not by the outside show
Of this world, vain and frail —””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Lady Marian
Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

God, Health, World, Grass

“The old form of trade union, which was born in the nineteenth century and aimed primarily at negotiating wages for a specific trase is no longer sufficient. First of all, as we have been argueing, the old trade unions are not able to represent the unemployed, the poor, or even the mobile and flexible post-Fordist workers with short term contracts, all of whom participate actively in social production and increase social wealth. Second, the old unions are divided according to the various products and tasks defined in the heyday of industrial production - a miners' union, a pipefitters' union, a machinists' union and so forth. Today, insofar as the conditions and the relations of labor are becoming common, these traditional divisions (or even newly defined divisions) no longer make sense and serve only as an obstacle. Finally the old unions have become purely economic, not political, organization.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

136
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Sense

“Our lives are the only meaningful expression of what we believe and in Whom we believe. And the only real wealth, for any of us, lies in our faith. Why do I say this? Faith in a Divine Being, in the Almighty, is the great moving power that can change our lives. With it comes the only lasting comfort and peace of mind. God is our Eternal Father, and He lives. I don't understand the wonder of His majesty; I can't comprehend His glory. But I know that He is intensely interested in our welfare and involved in our lives, that I can speak with Him in prayer, and that He will hear and listen.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

God, Peace, Faith, Understanding

“We must die without much delay, and corpses may not require such expansive wrappings, in order to go the way of all flesh. The inner wealth of brotherhood will be the same ephemeral spectre, rotting into tree bark like the spurious treasure of Rübezahl, the German mountain spirit, unless it shows it has the strength to withstand even death, and conquer death; and thus not only to undergo it but to be strongly above it as an essential part of eternal life.”

Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) German philosopher

Denn wir müssen sterben, mit kurzem Verzug, und vielleicht brauchen die Leichen keinen so weiten Faltenwurf, den Weg alles Fleisches zu gehen. Der brüderlich innere Reichtum wird nicht minder kurzer Spuk, verwest zu Baumrinde wie Rübezahls falsche Schätze: zeigt sich in ihm keine Kraft, gar den Tod zu bestehen, zu besiegen, mithin nicht nur von unten an hindurch zu gehen, sondern auch an sich selbst ein kräftig oberer Teil zu sein und das Wesenselement des ewigen Lebens.
Source: Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (1959), p. 41

Life, Death, Way, Mountain

“Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as Diderot and Voltaire? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine?”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

as much for science as Charles Darwin?
The Great Infidels (1881)

Pain, World, Knowledge, Science

“Politicians often talk about “creating jobs” as though they can magically invent them from thin air. A “government job” or a job subsidized by government funds requires the salary for that position to be drained out of the private sector through taxes. Moving wealth from one place to another is not actually 'creating' anything.”

Rupert Boneham (1964) American mentor, television personality, and politician

Rupert on the Issues https://web.archive.org/web/20130731155138/http://rupertforgovernor.com/issues, RupertForGovernor.com (2011)

“Oh, you'll not be any poorer if you smile along your way,
And your lot will not be harder for the kindly things you say.
Don't imagine you are wasting time for others that you spend:
You can rise to wealth and glory and still pause to be a friend.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

It Isn't Costly, stanza 3, p. 15.
A Heap o' Livin' (1916)

Smile, Way, Imagination, Time

“Paresis, as it is generally called in preference to the old GPI or general paralysis of the insane, is characterized by symptoms of bewildering variety, confirming the description of syphilis as the Great Imitator or, because of this very wealth of its ultimate manifestations, the Aristocrat of Diseases. Paresis involves a meningoencephalitis which marks its onset by personality changes, mild at first but growing steadily worse. There is irritability, failure of memory and judgement, insomnia, slovenliness, aggression, confusion, delusion, manic depression, epileptiform convulsion, slurred speech, incontinence, emaciation, sensational psychosis, finally death. The act of careless bohemian love, anonymous, quick and uncondomized, is proved not to have been worth the trouble or money…..”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

Love, Death, Money, Disease

“Clearly, the left-wing groups want to use this carbon theme as a tool for wealth redistribution.”

Luboš Motl (1973) Czech physicist and translator

http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/10/poland-rejects-global-carbon-communism.html#more <br class="br"> The Reference Frame http://motls.blogspot.com/

“A form of recreation not so accesible to many as games, but one which has in it a peculiar hold on that which is elemental in human nature, is hunting and fishing. These are true outdoor sports in the highest sense, and must be pursued in a way that develops energy, perseverance, skill, and courage of the individual. They call for personal direction, and can not be taken up vicariously. There is a great wealth of life and experience in this field which is never exhausted, and always fresh and new. It is accompanied by traits of character which make a universal appeal. A knowledge of these arts may well be cultivated and cherished like a knowledge of the humanities and the sciences. Around hunting and fishing is gathered a great wealth of prose and poetry, which testifies to the enduring interest which these sports have held all through the development of the race.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Life, Art, Way, Game

“I name next a word that it requires some courage to utter these days—the word of economy. It is like a echo from the distant period of my early life. The wealth of the country, and the vast comparative diffusion of comfort, has, I am afraid, put public economy, at least in its more rigid and severe forms, sadly out of countenance.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (2 October 1891), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), p. 377.
1890s

Life, Courage, Distant, Country

“Man is in pursuit of two goals: he is looking for happinesse and, being by essence empty ("étant vide par essence", Fr.), he is trying to fill (or take up, - "remplir", Fr.) his life; the latter reason play a more considerable role than we ordinarily think. What we take for vainglory, ambition, love of power and riches (or wealth), is often, indeed, a need to mask this emptiness, a need to let one's hair down (or to live it up), to put oneself on a false scent or trail.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

de se donner le change", Fr.
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 56.

Love, Life, Thinking, Change

“At what price have so many of us come to believe that the economy is the realm of natural order and that the legitimate and competent sphere of policing—of administration and government—lies elsewhere? What flows from that sharp dichotomy between orderliness in the market and ordering in the penal sphere? At what price do we embrace these categories? And here, the answer is equally clear: at the price, first, of naturalizing the market and thereby effectively shielding from normative assessment the regulatory mechanisms in our contemporary markets and the wealth distributions that occur daily; and at the price, second, of easing, facilitating, and enabling the massive expansion of our penal sphere, or, to be more provocative, of making possible mass incarceration today.”

Bernard Harcourt (1963) American academic

Source: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (2011), pp. 31-32

Nature

“Paul has no problem with wealth, yet he advocates positions that work against his personal economic interests. He notes that, while advocating the closing of tax loopholes, he has no difficulty taking advantage of those that remain. Fundamentally, Paul represents a middle path, as expressed in the ancient dictum that "men with vision walk in the middle."”

Michael Szenberg (1934) American economist

5.Paul Samuelson is Human.
Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson (2006)

Men, Problem, Personality

“His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 61.

Health

“Trump obviously never meant to impose a wealth test on his administration, or he would have failed it himself. He is proof that a fortune isn’t necessarily an obstacle to being a champion of an agenda of populist reform.”

Rich Lowry (1968) American journalist

No, the Swamp Won't Be Drained (December 01, 2016)

“Neither thieves nor officials produce a marketable good to offset what they take; they contribute nothing to the purchasing power because they contribute nothing to the general fund of wealth.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 273

“The insolence of wealth will creep out.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

April 18, 1778, p. 400
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III

“But if one Subject giveth Counsell to another, to do anything contrary to the Lawes, whether that Counsell proceed from evil intention, or from ignorance onely, it is punishable by the Common-wealth; because ignorance of the Law, is no good excuse, where every man is bound to take notice of the Lawes to which he is subject.”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The Second Part, Chapter 25, p. 132
Leviathan (1651)

Law, Evil

“It is held that one fulfils his whole duty when he is industrious in his business or vocation, observing also the decencies of domestic, civil, and religious life. But activity of this kind stirs only the surface of our being, leaving what is most divine to starve; and when it is made the one important thing, men lose sense for what is high and holy, and become commonplace, mechanical, and hard. Science is valuable for them as a means to comfort and wealth; morality, as an aid to success; religion, as an agent of social order. In their eyes those who devote themselves to ideal aims and ends are as foolish as the alchemists, since the only real world is that of business and politics, or of business simply, since politics is business.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 14

Life, Men, World, Religion

“Neither the Government nor the local authorities make any wealth or have any money of their own. If we want them to spend more and more we have to pay. The remedy is in our hands. Stop running to them asking them to do this, that and everything under the sun - and demand instead that they stop doing and spending so much.”

Jo Grimond (1913–1993) British soldier, politician and academic

February 1957, quoted in Michael McManus Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire (Birlinn, 2001) p. 120.

Money, Sun

“Economists, firstly, regard only one part of man's nature, and treat him simply as a money-making animal; secondly, they disregard the influence of custom, and only take account of competition. Certain laws are laid down under these assumptions; as, for instance, that the rate of wages always tends to an equality, the permanent difference obtaining in various employments being only sufficient to balance the favourable or unfavourable circumstances attending each of them — a law which is only true after a certain stage of civilisation and in so far as the acquisition of wealth is the sole object of men.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 28-29

Men, Money, Law, Nature

“From the fundamental nature of the Philistine, it follows that, in regard to others, as he has no intellectual but only physical needs, he will seek those who are capable of satisfying the latter not the former. And so of all the demands he makes of others the very smallest will be that of any outstanding intellectual abilities. On the contrary, when he comes across these they will excite his antipathy and even hatred. For here he has a hateful feeling of inferiority and also a dull secret envy which he most carefully attempts to conceal even from himself; but in this way it grows sometimes into a feeling of secret rage and rancour. Therefore it will never occur to him to assess his own esteem and respect in accordance with such qualities, but they will remain exclusively reserved for rank and wealth, power and influence, as being in his eyes the only real advantages to excel in which is also his desire.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 344–345
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Hate, Secret, Way, Feeling

“It is therefore, the interest of all, that every one, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally, that society may be improved in its character, — that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, — that everyone should be placed in the midst of those external circumstances that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life, that man may be made truly intelligent, moral and happy, and be thus prepared to enter upon the coming Millennium.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

A Development of the Principles & Plans on which to establish self-supporting Home Colonies (1841).

Life, Happiness, Pleasure, Education

“There are many of our so-called captains on industry who, if the truth were told, and a shorter and uglier word were not unpermissible, are little better than malefactors of great wealth.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 14 : Peculiar Conduct of a Personage

Truth

“Wealth is a form of power in our society. With great power comes great responsibility. If you have too much wealth, ipso facto, you have too much power - therefore you have too much responsibility - and you're a kind of dictator.”

Will Self (1961) English writer and journalist

The Moral Maze, BBC Radio 4, October 1st, 2008.

“What we need is a life of balance — neither to wallow in the pleasures of wealth nor to lead a life of asceticism, but to embrace a life of simplicity and a heart of purity.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

World-Destruction: Never, Impossible! (1994)

Life, Pleasure, Heart

“If the question of the distribution of wealth were solved for all society and all lived in average comfort and without urgent anxiety, the question would still be how many would be at peace with their own souls and have that enduring joy and contentment which alone can make the outward things fair and sweet and rise victorious over change.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 47

Peace, Soul, Question, Change

“There is more of a mystery to the origin of the pin factory that Adam Smith (1776) discusses in his Wealth of Nations than is generally realized.”

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

Source: Hidden Order - How Adaptation Builds Complexity (1995), Ch 3. Echoing Emergence, p. 97

“Crops failed; wealth took a flight; house, treasure, land,
Slipped from my hold—thus plenty comes and goes.
One friend I had, but he too loosed his hand
(Or was it I?) the year I met with Rose.”

Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833–1908) American poet, critic, and essayist

"The World Well Lost".

Housing

“Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness.”

Christopher Marlowe The Jew of Malta

Ferneze, Act I, scene ii
The Jew of Malta (c. 1589)

“There are persons who constantly clamor. They complain of oppression, speculation, and pernicious influence of wealth. They cry out loudly against all banks and corporations, and a means by which small capitalists become united in order to produce important and beneficial results. They carry on mad hostility against all established institutions. They would choke the fountain of industry and dry all streams.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Speech in the Senate (12 March 1838)

Hostility, Personality, Cry, Madness

“The safest wealth is the poverty of needs.”

Franz Werfel (1890–1945) Austrian-Bohemian author

Der sicherste Reichtum ist die Armut an Bedürfnissen.
Zwischen oben und unten (1946), p. 315

“The doctrines that by keeping out foreign goods more wealth, and consequently more employment, will be created at home, are either true or they are not true. We contend that they are not true. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

From "Why I am a Free Trader" (1905), Churchill revised this several times, the earliest recorded version coming from the speech "For Free Trade" at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 19 February 1904:
It is the theory of the Protectionist that imports are an evil. He thinks that if you shut out the foreign imported manufactured goods you will make these goods yourselves, in addition to the goods which you make now, including those goods which we make to exchange for the foreign goods that come in. If a man can believe that he can believe anything. (Laughter.) We Free-traders say it is not true. To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle. (Laughter and cheers.)
Early career years (1898–1929)
Source: [Churchill, Winston, Stead, W.T., Coming Men on Coming Questions, 13 April 1905, Chapter 1: Why I am a Free Trader, https://archive.org/details/comingmenoncomin00stea]
Source: [Churchill, Winston, Rhodes James, Robert, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, Chelsea House Publishers / R.R. Bowker Company, 1974, 0835206939]

Home

“If there is no choice, we will declare war on the millionaires in Israel. The ground is burning to such an extent, that the rich people of the land should not be surprised if certain groups would arrive and just climb on their houses and expel them from their homes, or if their daughters could no longer walk outside. Each one would have to establish a private police force. When the struggles begin, illustrating the fact that we cannot continue in this condition where there are groups that accumulate wealth and get rich in a legendary fashion, while others are left so far behind, no one should fool himself into thinking that his house and yard are out of the game.”

Amir Peretz (1952) Israeli politician

Source: Interview by Orna Kadosh in Maariv, May 12, 2000 http://www.nrg.co.il/online/archive/ART47/692.html http://www.nrg.co.il/online/archive/ART48/171.html

War, People, Fools, Home

“Einstein's theory has the very highest degree of æsthetic merit: every lover of the beautiful must wish it to be true. It gives a vast unified survey of the operations of nature, with a technical simplicity in the critical assumptions which makes the wealth of deductions astonishing. It is a case of an advance arrived at by pure theory: the whole effect of Einstein's work is to make physics more philosophical (in a good sense), and to restore some of that intellectual unity which belonged to the great scientific systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but which was lost through increasing specialization and the overwhelming mass of detailed knowledge. In some ways our age is not a good one to live in, but for those who are interested in physics there are great compensations.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

p, 125
Theory of Relativity: A Concise Statement (1920)

Age, Beauty, Way, Lovers

“Man cannot live on charm alone, and an ambitious man cannot live on anything less than wealth, good social connections and substantial political influence.”

Susan Howatch book The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune (1984), Part 1: Robert

“When a man of my father’s wealth dies of cancer, you know they haven’t found a cure.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

Some Hope, Chapter 9

“Separate wealth from value. All living things have value. We impart this value upon lifeless things to give them worth not vice versa.”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

Rules 2 Rule

“With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech on the 25th anniversary of the Moncada Barracks attack (26 July 1978) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1978/esp/f260778e.html

Hunger, World, Support, Nature

“There were three known existing sapphires. One was in the Conquest of Space Museum on Terra, one was in the hands of United System President Polonius Delph—he was the richest man in seven worlds, or had been until he’d paid cash for his jewel. The other had been stolen soon after its discovery. Maybe Delph had it…
“From what I understand of your world, Delph isn’t the only one who wants the sapphires. He has rivals in the Plutocracy. Another mysterious collector? Or those rivals are competing for the presidency or they think they can ruin him. As you know, it’s a vicious circle in politics. You can’t get to be president unless you have the wealth and you can’t really make massive sums until you’re president.””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: Short fiction, The Lost Canal (2013), p. 355

World, Understanding, Thinking

“In a city where most of the wealth is controlled by a small few, certain things are overlooked, particularly when it comes to the assertion of privilege.”

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Part IV, Chapter V (p. 385)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

“Under the Socialists, rapid strides have been taken towards the Iron Curtain State. We have seen increased nationalisation measures, increased powers of central Government over both large and small companies, increased levels of tax on the pay packet and on savings alike, and an increased proportion of the national income spent not by the wage-earner but by the Government or Government agencies. In the result, the Prime Minister has become the first Socialist Minister since the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1951 to say that his policies will mean a reduced standard of living for our people…it is clear that Socialist systems are not good at creating wealth; they can only spend the wealth that others create.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in the House of Commons (9 June 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103046 <br class="br">Leader of the Opposition

People

“What does it mean to be “successful”? How do you achieve your dreams?
Does it mean creating an impressive list of achievements? Does it mean gaining significant wealth, status, position, and power? Maybe it means pleasing your parents, family, and friends?
I wrote this book to address these questions and to create a road map to help you achieve your aspirations. Following this road map involves taking a series of steps and answering a set of questions, all of which require you to look inward as well as outward. It also involves developing a set of new skills and habits, some of which may be challenging and uncomfortable for you.”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: What You're Really Meant To Do, 2013, p. 1; Lead paragraph

Books, Family, Dreams, Question

“We want Realism's wealth of experience and Symbolism's depth of feeling. All art is a problem of balance between two opposites.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Art, Feeling, Problem

“I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character — not wealth or power or position — is of supreme worth.”

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874–1960) American financier and philanthropist

I Believe

“Making the future and the road to the future wealth lies in the youth of the present and future, and rebuilding the nation’s institutions based on knowledgeable scientific foundations that require promising human capacities derived from college graduates. Universities are the makers of men, we are proud of their role and of the efforts of their administrators.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

May 8, 2005, at the First Scientific Conference of the Faculty of Commerce – Islamic University of Gaza, Gaza Palestine.

Men, Youth, Knowledge, Effort

“When Sulla died in the year [78 B. C. ], the oligarchy which he had restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but, as it had been established by force, it still needed force to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes. it was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds and with very different designs…There were… the numerous and important classes whom the sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whom the political or private interest it had directly injured. Among those who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps, which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in [89 B. C. ] as merely an installment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded a ready soil for agitation. To this category belonged also the freedman, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their earlier, practically useless, suffrage. In the same position stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment and their equal tenacity of power. The populace of the capital, which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise discontented. Still deeper exasperation prevailed among the burgess bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations - whether they, like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter, and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arrentines and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory, but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them by the Roman people..”

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

Vol. 4, Part: 1. Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

People, Secret, Nature, Reality

“In its new aspect the corporation is a means whereby the wealth of innumerable individuals has been concentrated into huge aggregates and whereby control over this wealth has been surrendered to a unified direction. The power attendant upon such concentration has brought forth princes of industry, whose position in the community is yet to be defined. The surrender of control over their wealth by investors has effectively broken the old property relationships and has raise the problem of defining these relationship anew. The direction of industry by persons other than those who have ventured their wealth has raised the question of the motive force back of such direction and the effective distribution of the returns from business enterprise.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 2 (1967, p. 4)

Communication, Motivation, Question, Business

“Whoever recites the first four verses of Suratul Baqarah, Ayatul Kursi (verse 255 of Suratul Baqarah) along with the two verses which follow it (verses 256 and 257 up to ‘Wa Hum Fiha Khalidun’), and the last three verses (of this same Surah) will not see any bad or sorrow in his life or his wealth; Satan will not come near him; and he will not forget the Qur’an.”

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

Thawabul A’mal, Page 234
Shi'ite Hadith

Life, Forgetting

“Both in England and on the Continent a graduated property tax (l'impôt progressif) has been advocated, on the avowed ground that the state should use the instrument of taxation as a means of mitigating the inequalities of wealth. I am as desirous as any one that means should be taken to diminish those inequalities, but not so as to relieve the prodigal at the expense of the prudent.To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours. It is not the fortunes which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it is for the public good to place under limitation.”

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist

Principles of Political Economy http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlP64.html (1848), Book V, Chapter II

People, Penalty

“In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments.”

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

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (February 23, 1890)
Letters

Suffering

“Like so much of cool hunting, Hilfiger's marketing journey feeds off the alienation at the heart of America's race relations: selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Five: "The Patriarchy Gets Funky"

Youth, Heart

“Jesus said that we could not serve both God and wealth, and it is obvious that Western society is organized in the service of wealth.”

John B. Cobb (1925) American theologian

Eastern View of Economics http://web.archive.org/web/20150906075839/http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3607

God

“It must be remembered that our State is but in its infancy. That its population is small, and its material wealth is very limited. That notwithstanding it embraces within its boundaries a large area of territory, which includes extensive districts of productive lands, valuable mines of coal, iron, and precious metals, vast quantities of timber, broad rivers, innumerable bays, harbors, and inlets, abounding in fish of the choicest kind sufficient to supply the markets of the world, yet its resources are comparatively undeveloped. And that while it possesses all the elements of grandeur and magnificence, its greatness can not be successfully achieved without the benefit of a well regulated government, whose foundation is laid upon the broad principles of honesty, economy, and justice.”

W. W. Thayer (1827–1899) American judge

W. W. Thayer (1880). Governor William W. Thayer - Biennial Message, 1880 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777837. Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State. Source: Messages and Documents, Biennial Message of Gov. William Thayer to the Legislative Assembly, 1880, Salem, Oregon, W.P. Keady, State Printer, 1880.

World, Justice, Fish

“The business which brings you here to-day is of a peculiar character, due to the very peculiar character of the Empire over which the Queen rules. It yields to none, it is perhaps superior to all in its greatness, in its extent, in the vastness of its population, in the magnificence of its wealth. But it has this peculiarity which separates it from other empires—the want of continuity. The Empire is separated into parts, and distant parts, by large stretches of ocean, and what we are really here to do is to see how far we must acquiesce in the conditions which that separation causes, how far we can obliterate them by agreement and by organization.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Speech to the Colonial Conference, London (4 April 1887), quoted in The Times (5 April 1887), p. 11

Business, Distant, Parting

“The love of people goes far beyond liberty, rights, equality, and justice. It is something positive, seeks the fullest possible self-realization; it contemplates happiness, overflows all differences, and creates the kind of wealth that can be produced only by people who enjoy their common participation in a community.”

Elmer Eric Schattschneider (1892–1971) American political scientist

Source: Two Hundred Million Americans in Search of a Government (1969), p. 43

Love, Happiness, People, Justice

“In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 19

Communication

“Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Stobaeus, iv. 31c. 88
Quoted by Stobaeus

Housing

“Nature lies disheveled, pale,
With her feverish lips apart,—
Day by day the pulses fail,
Nearer to her bounding heart;
Yet that slackened grasp doth hold
Store of pure and genuine gold;
Quick thou comest, strong and free,
Type of all the wealth to be,—
Goldenrod!”

Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863–1953) American novelist, poet

Goldenrod; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 326.

Nature, Strong, Heart

“Imagine each family as a kind of little factory--a multiperson unit producing meals, health, skills, children, and self-esteem from market goods and the time, skills, and knowledge of its members. This is only one of the remarkable concepts explored by Gary Becker in his landmark work on the family. Becker applies economic theory to the most sensitive and fateful personal decisions, such as choosing a spouse or having children. He uses the basic economic assumptions of maximizing behavior, stable preferences, arid equilibria in explicit or implicit markets to analyze the allocation of time to child care as well as to careers, to marriage and divorce in polygynous as well as monogamous societies, to the increase and decrease of wealth from one generation to another.”

Gary S. Becker book A Treatise on the Family

Book abstract 2009
A Treatise on the Family, 1981

Fate, Marriage, Children, Health

“Today, in the highly-developed capitalistic nation of the United States, the only people who could be classed as proletariat under Marx's definition would be those who own no land, have no savings deposits, no social security, no retirement benefits, no life insurance, no corporate securities and no government bonds, for all these represent the ownership of productive wealth or of money, funds over and beyond the immediate needs of consumption. Such a class of propertyless proletariat does exist in the United States just as there has been one in all nations and in all ages, but the significant thing is that the proletariat in the United States is such a small minority that Marx would scarcely want to claim it. Under American capitalism wealth has been more widely distributed among the people than in any large nation in secular history. This has reduced the property-less class which Marx had in mind to little more than a fringe of the population.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Life, Money, People, Age

“It wasn’t hard for people to see the Titanic as a metaphor for Western civilization’s obsessions with speed, wealth, and conquest at the expense of contemplation, sharing and the well-being of one’s neighbor.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), pp. 188-189

People, Speed

“He left an estate of eleaven thousand pounds per annum. Sir John Danvers, who knew him, told me that he had heard one say to him, reflecting on his great scraping of wealth, that his sonnes would spend his Estate faster than he gott it; he replyed, They cannot take more delight in the spending of it than I did in the getting of it.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Sir Edward Coke"
Brief Lives

“No pillager or wrecker had been there;
It seemed that time had passed on otherwhere,
Nor laid a finger on this hidden place
Rich with the wealth of some forgotten race.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Time

“The people of Vietnam, north and south, seek the same things, the shared needs of man, the needs for food and shelter and education—the chance to build and work and till the soil, free from the arbitrary horrors of battle, the desire to walk in the dignity of those who master their own destiny. For many painful years, in war and revolution and infrequent peace, they have struggled to fulfill those needs. It is a crime against mankind that so much courage, and so much will, and so many dreams, must be flung on the fires of war and death. To all of those caught up in this conflict we therefore say again tonight, 'Let us choose peace, and with it the wondrous works of peace, and beyond that, the time when hope reaches toward consummation, and life is the servant of life'. In this work, we plan to discharge our duty to the people whom we serve. This is the State of the Union. But over it all—wealth, and promise, and expectation—lies our troubling awareness of American men at war tonight.”

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)

Life, Death, Men, Pain

“Even where the Faith is preserved men pursue wealth and power inordinately. Where the Faith is lost they pursue nothing else.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: Survivals and New Arrivals (1929), Ch. III Survivals (iii) The "Wealth and Power" Argument

Men, Faith

“On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section IX, p. 412-413
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

“However widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed, no general increase of the community's wealth can make any approach to satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of every one to excel every one else in the accumulation of goods.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 32

Communication

“Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight:
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

"The Preacher and the Slave" (1911)

World, Freedom, Learning, Singing

“The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization….
The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.
The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.
But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

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

Remarks at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (May 22, 1964). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–64, book 1, p. 704.
1960s

Life, Wisdom, Men, Hunger

“The real struggle today, just as in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, is between a view of the world termed liberalism or radicalism, for which the primary object of government and of foreign policy is peace, freedom of trade and intercourse, and economic wealth and that other view, militarist or rather diplomatic, which thinks in terms of power, prestige, national or personal glory, the imposition of a culture and hereditary or racial prejudice. To the good English radical, the latter is so unreal, so crazy in its combination of futility and evil, that he is often in danger of forgetting or disbelieving its actual existence.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

published in Manchester Guardian (1922); in Collected Writings, Volume 17, p. 370

World, Peace, Thinking, Freedom

“Only when the stock of wealth can be related to human energy by purchasing living energy as "labor power", offered for sale by people who have no other means of using their labor to ensure their livelihood: and only when it can relate that labor power to purchased machines - embodiments of past transformation of nature by human energy expended in the past - only then does "wealth" become "capital."”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 10, Crises and Differentiation in Capitalism, p. 298.

People, Nature, Past

“All work undertaken should be useful — not just for a day, or a year, but useful in the sense that it affords permanent improvement in living conditions or that it creates future new wealth for the Nation.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, State of the Union address (1935)

Sense, Future

“The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.”

George Reisman (1937) American economist

Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996)

Truth, Nature, Animals

“How is it possible for me to thank God in my heart for the food he gives me and for life, while every morsel I eat I earn with my toil and even suffering? There may be a Providence for the rich man, but every poor man must be his own Providence. As for the value of life, we poor folks don’t live for ourselves at all; we live for other people. I often wonder if the rich man who owns great blocks of stock in the road and reckons his wealth in the millions does not sometimes think, as he sits at his well-filled table and looks at the happy faces of his children, of the poor car driver who toils for his benefit for a dollar and ninety cents a day, and is lucky if he tastes meat twice a week and can give the little ones at home warm clothes and blankets for the winter.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 17 (p. 252)

Life, God, Happiness, Children

“It is impossible to over-emphasize the importance of al-Jazari's work in the history of engineering. Until modern times there is no other document from any cultural area that provides a comparable wealth of instructions for the design, manufacture and assembly of machines… Al-Jazari did not only assimilate the techniques of his non-Arab and Arab predecessors, he was also creative. He added several mechanical and hydraulic devices. The impact of these inventions can be seen in the later designing of steam engines and internal combustion engines, paving the way for automatic control and other modern machinery. The impact of al-Jazari's inventions is still felt in modern contemporary mechanical engineering [2].”

Donald Hill (1922–1994) British historian and engineer

Donald Hill, Studies in Medieval Islamic Technology,; as cited in: Salim Al-Hassani. " 800 Years Later: In Memory of Al-Jazari, A Genius Mechanical Engineer http://muslimheritage.com/article/800-years-later-memory-al-jazari-genius-mechanical-engineer," at muslimheritage.com, 2015.

Way, History, Time

Quotes about wealth page 8

Quotes about wealth
page 8