“Most rich people get rich by taking what they want without paying for it. It’s the way of the world.”

Martina (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 210.

2003
December
The Guardian
'I know how to be sour'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/jan/01/1

On the Silver Mark (1791)

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Elvis and Gladys (1985), Ch. 5 : A Romance, p. 55
Context: What is always overlooked is that although the poor want to be rich, it does not follow that they either like the rich or that they in any way want to emulate their characters which, in fact, they despise. Both the poor and the rich have always found precisely the same grounds on which to complain about each other. Each feels the other has no manners, is disloyal, corrupt, insensitive — and has never put in an honest day's work in its life.

Response to a question from the audience during a meeting of the Eastern Science Fiction Association on (7 November 1948), as quoted in a 1994 affidavit by Sam Moskowitz.
This statement is similar or identical to several statements http://www.bible.ca/scientology-1million-start-a-religion.htm Hubbard is reported to have made to various individuals or groups in the 1940s. Variants include:
The incident is stamped indelibly in my mind because of one statement that Ron Hubbard made. What led him to say what he did I can't recall — but in so many words Hubbard said: "I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is!"
L. Ron Hubbard to Lloyd A. Eshbach, in 1949; as quoted by Eshbach in his autobiography Over My Shoulder: Reflections On A Science Fiction Era (1983) ISBN 1-880418-11-8 .
Y'know, we're all wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make real money, you gotta start a religion!
As reported to Mike Jittlov by Theodore Sturgeon as a statement Hubbard made while at the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society clubhouse in the 1940s.
Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars, the best way to do it would be start his own religion.
As quoted in the Los Angeles Times (27 August 1978)
Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.
As quoted in the article "Scientology: Anatomy of a Frightening Cult" by Eugene H. Methvin. Reader's Digest (May 1980).
I always knew he was exceedingly anxious to hit big money — he used to say he thought the best way to do it would be to start a cult.
Sam Merwin, Editor of Thrilling Science Fiction magazine Winter of 1946-47; quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah, The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987) by Russell Miller
Whenever he was talking about being hard up he often used to say that he thought the easiest way to make money would be to start a religion.
Neison Himmel, briefly a roommate of Hubbard in Pasadena during the fall of 1945, in a 1986 interview, quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah, The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987) by Russell Miller.