“Words are good servants but bad masters.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
As quoted by Laura Huxley, in conversation with Alan Watts about her memoir This Timeless Moment (1968), in Pacifica Archives #BB2037 [sometime between 1968-1973])
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Words are good servants but bad masters.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
As quoted by Laura Huxley, in conversation with Alan Watts about her memoir This Timeless Moment (1968), in Pacifica Archives #BB2037 [sometime between 1968-1973])
“Money. It's a good servant but a bad master.”
Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer
Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“The markets make a good servant but a bad master, and a worse religion”
Amory B. Lovins (1947) American physicist
[This much I know: Amory Lovins, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/23/ethicalliving.lifeandhealth4, The Guardian, 2008-11-20]
“Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master.”
P.T. Barnum (1810–1891) American showman and businessman
Ch. 3: "Avoid Debt" http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/barnum/moneygetting/moneygetting_chap4.html <br class="br">Art of Money Getting (1880)
“Esteem money neither more nor less than it deserves, it is a good servant and a bad master.”
Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist
N'estime l'argent ni plus ni moins qu'il ne vaut: c'est un bon serviteur et un mauvais maître.
Preface to Théatre complet de Al. Dumas fils (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1863) vol. 1, p. 4; translation from Ernest Smith Fields of Adventure (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1924) p. 99.
George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States
Attributed to "The First President of the United States" in "Liberty and Government" by W. M., in The Christian Science Journal, Vol. XX, No. 8 (November 1902) edited by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 465; no earlier or original source for this statement is cited; later quoted in The Cry for Justice : An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest (1915) edited by Upton Sinclair, p. 305, from which it became far more widely quoted and in Frank J. Wilstach, A Dictionary of Similes, 2d ed., p. 526 (1924). In The Great Thoughts (1985), George Seldes says, p. 441, col. 2, footnote, this paragraph “although credited to the ‘Farewell’ [address] cannot be found in it. Lawson Hamblin, who owns a facsimile, and Horace Peck, America’s foremost authority on quotations, informed me this paragraph is apocryphal.” It is listed as spurious at the Mount Vernon website http://www.mountvernon.org/research-collections/digital-encyclopedia/article/spurious-quotations/ <br class="br">Unsourced variant : Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. <br class="br">Misattributed, Spurious attributions <br class="br">Variant: Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Alan Keyes (1950) American politician
Renew America rally in Alabama, April 29, 2000. http://renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/00_04_29alrenew.htm. <br class="br">2000