“The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.”
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
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Walter Bagehot 42
British journalist, businessman, and essayist 1826–1877Related quotes
“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
Source: The Books in My Life
On the U.S. Apollo program, press conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil (November 1968) as quoted in The Reality of Monarchy (1970) by Andrew Duncan
1960s
Mobutu to congressman Mervyn Dymally, 1988. Elliot and Dymally, p. 25
1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Context: I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property as well as human welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the ends are the same; but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for property, as you were in the Civil War. I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends; but I rank dividends below human character. Again, I do not have any sympathy with the reformer who says he does not care for dividends. Of course, economic welfare is necessary, for a man must pull his own weight and be able to support his family. I know well that the reformers must not bring upon the people economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will go down in the ruin. But we must be ready to face temporary disaster, whether or not brought on by those who will war against us to the knife. Those who oppose reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.
Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 155
“I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.”
Book II, Ch. 17
Attributed
“Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money.”
Source: Mind and Nature, a necessary unity, 1988, p. 56
Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
