“Virtue with poverty didst thou prefer
To the possession of great wealth with vice.”
Dante Alighieri book Purgatorio
Canto XX, lines 26–27 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
“In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.”
Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)
Context: In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.
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Denis Diderot106
French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist 1713–1784Related quotes
Theognis of Megara (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet active in approximately the sixth century BC
πολλοί τοι πλουτοῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται:
ἀλλ᾽ ἡμεῖς τούτοις οὐ διαμειψόμεθα
τῆς ἀρετῆς τὸν πλοῦτον, ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἔμπεδον αἰεί,
χρήματα δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἄλλοτε ἄλλος ἔχει.
Source: Elegies, Lines 315-318, also attributed to Solon
“Money is the source of the greatest vice, & that Nation which is most rich, is most wicked.”
Frances Burney (1752–1840) English writer
The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 1, p. 48, journal entry, November 17, 1768.
Letters
“The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.”
René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist
“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.”
Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada
The Star, January 30, 2007.
2007
“MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY.”
L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology
"Principles of Money Management" (9 March 1972).
Scientology Policy Letters
“Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.”
Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)
Diary (21 December 1843), referring to Aristotle's Ethics
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
“The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician
Review of Aiken’s Life of Addison (1843)
