“The legend of King Midas has been generally misunderstood. Most people think the curse that turned everything the old miser touched into gold, leaving him unable to eat or drink, was a lesson in the perils of avarice. But Midas’s true sin was his failure to understand monetary economics. What the gods were really telling him is that gold is just a metal. If it sometimes seems to be more, that is only because society has found it convenient to use gold as a medium of exchange—a bridge between other, truly desirable, objects. There are other possible mediums of exchange, and it is silly to imagine that this pretty, but only moderately useful, substance has some irreplaceable significance.”

— Paul Krugman

"The Gold Bug Variations", Originally published in Slate (Nov. 23, 1996)
The Accidental Theorist: And Other Dispatches From The Dismal Science (1998)

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Paul Krugman 106

American economist 1953

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“Legendary King Midas never knew the feel of silk or a human hand after everything he touched turned to gold. Humans are stuck in a similar Midas-like predicament: we can't directly experience the true texture of reality because everything we touch turns to matter.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 10, Quantum Realities: Four More, p. 194

“The male has a negative Midas Touch - everything he touches turns to shit.”

Valerie Solanas book SCUM Manifesto

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 5 (hyphen (not en- or em-dash) so in original).

“It is the system, rather than individuals, that is the source of pollution and degradation. My prison-house environment is but another manifestation of the Midas-hand, whose cursed touch turns everything to the brutal service of Mammon.”

Alexander Berkman book Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist

Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912), Ch. 18: "The Solitary".

“If the world as a whole returned to the gold standard there would be such fluctuations in the value of gold that it would very soon prove impractical.
Today an international gold standard could only mean that a few countries would maintain a real gold standard. The other countries would hang on to the system through a gold exchange standard — where the currency isn't really redeemable in gold but the government attempts to keep a fixed rate between its currency and gold.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, Interview in Silver & Gold Report (1980)

“See ye not, Courtesy
Is the true Alchemy,
Turning to gold all it touches and tries?”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

The Song of Courtesy https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1381/1381-h/1381-h.htm#page129, IV (1859).

“But what's worth more than gold?"

"Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren't you worth more than that?”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

“The wealth of first-hand source materials presented in the articles that comprise this book, portray not only the base metal that was Tipu Sultan but also the components of that alchemy which has transmuted him into twenty-four carat gold.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Tipu Sultan - Villain or Hero (1993)

“Labor is the true alchemist that beats out in patient transmutation the baser metals into gold.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 367.

“What dares not impious man for cursed Gold!”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Æneis

“1154. Content is the Philosopher’s Stone, that turns all it touches into Gold.”

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

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1758) : Content is the Philosopher’s Stone, that turns all it touches into Gold.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

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