Quotes about prosperity
page 9

Alfredo Rocco photo
Joseph Chamberlain photo
Stafford Cripps photo
Plutarch photo
Harold Macmillan photo
Harold Macmillan photo

“The masses now took prosperity for granted. ... The country simply did not realize that we were living beyond our income, and would have to pay for it sooner or later.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

Letter to Nigel Nicolson (26 June 1957), quoted in Alistair Horne, Harold Macmillan, Volume II: 1957–1986 (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 64
Prime Minister

Radosveta Vassileva photo
Charles Evans Hughes photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
William Ellery Channing photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“I conclude, then, that so long as Fortune varies and men stand still, they will prosper while they suit the times, and fail when they do not. But I do feel this: that it is better to be rash than timid, for Fortune is a woman, and the man who wants to hold her down must beat and bully her. We see that she yields more often to men of this stripe than to those who come coldly toward her.”

Original: (it) Conchiudo adunque, che, variando la fortuna, e gli uomini stando nei loro modi ostinati, sono felici mentre concordano insieme, e come discordano sono infelici. Io giudico ben questo, che sia meglio essere impetuoso, che rispettivo, perchè la Fortuna è donna; ed è necessario, volendola tener sotto, batterla, ed urtarla; e si vede che la si lascia più vincere da questi che da quelli che freddamente procedono.
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 25, as translated by RM Adams

Donald J. Trump photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Theobald Wolfe Tone photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Alec Douglas-Home photo
Nicolás Maduro photo
Roy Jenkins photo

“We must restore some stability and be prepared, if necessary, to make some sacrifices, both of dogma and materialism, to achieve it. There is no point in pretending that we are not facing an economic crisis without precedent since the growth of post-war prosperity.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech to the Pembrokeshire Constituency Labour Party in Haverfordwest (26 July 1974), quoted in The Times (27 July 1974), p. 3
1970s

Jair Bolsonaro photo

“For the first time in a while, a pro-America Brazilian president arrives in DC. It’s the beginning of a partnership focused on liberty and prosperity, something that all of us Brazilians have long wished for. You have a president who is a friend of the United States who admires this beautiful country.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

On Twitter, on 17 March 2019. Bolsonaro chega a Washington e comemora proximidade com os EUA https://br.reuters.com/article/topNews/idBRKCN1QY0YX-OBRTP. Reuters, 17 March 2019.

Toussaint Louverture photo
James Callaghan photo
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo
Clement Attlee photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Seneca the Younger photo
John Major photo
Henry Campbell-Bannerman photo
David Lloyd George photo
David Lloyd George photo
David Lloyd George photo
Stephen King photo
Philip Hammond photo
Mark Drakeford photo

“If the House of Commons remains deadlocked, then going back to the people will have to be the way forward. A prosperous future for Wales is secured by continuing membership of the EU.”

Mark Drakeford (1954) First Minister of Wales

Rees-Mogg says reformed Brexit deal could win over critics https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46971390 BBC News (23 January 2019)
2019

Johann Most photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Imran Khan photo
Francesco Sansovino photo

“Men have no greater enemy than excessive prosperity, for it destroys their mastery over themselves and makes them licentious and vicious, with a hankering after novelties destructive of their own well-being.”

Francesco Sansovino (1521–1583) Italian writer

Non hanno gli huomini maggior nimico che la troppa prosperità, perchè gli fa impotenti di se medesimi, licentiosi et arditi al male, e cupidi di turbare il ben proprio con cose nuove.
CCLXI.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 376.
Concetti Politici (1578)

Imad Mughniyah photo

“The martyrdom of our mujahid, devoted and selfless brother haj Imad Mugniya was a great victory and prosperous end for him…The crime-ridden and bloodthirsty Zionists must know that the holy blood of martyrs like Imad Mughniya create thousands of other Mughniyas.”

Imad Mughniyah (1962–2008) Lebanese militant, head of security for Hezbollah

Ali Khamenei, Iranian Leaders To Nasrallah: Mughniya "Example For Young Generation To Follow," Assassination "Will Boost Resistance", MEMRI, February 14, 2008 http://www.thememriblog.org/iran/blog_personal/en/5436.htm,

John Marshall photo
Walker Percy photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo

“The Mexicans are a good people. They live on little and work hard. They suffer from the influence of the Church, which, while I was in Mexico at least, was as bad as could be. The Mexicans were good soldiers, but badly commanded. The country is rich, and if the people could be assured a good government, they would prosper. See what we have made of Texas and California — empires. There are the same materials for new empires in Mexico. I have always had a deep interest in Mexico and her people, and have always wished them well. I suppose the fact that I served there as a young man, and the impressions the country made upon my young mind, have a good deal to do with this. When I was in London, talking with Lord Beaconsfield, he spoke of Mexico. He said he wished to heaven we had taken the country, that England would not like anything better than to see the United States annex it. I suppose that will be the future of the country. Now that slavery is out of the way there could be no better future for Mexico than absorption in the United States. But it would have to come, as San Domingo tried to come, by the free will of the people. I would not fire a gun to annex territory. I consider it too great a privilege to belong to the United States for us to go around gunning for new territories. Then the question of annexation means the question of suffrage, and that becomes more and more serious every day with us. That is one of the grave problems of our future.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

On Mexicans and Mexico's future, pp. 448–449 https://archive.org/details/aroundworldgrant02younuoft/page/n4
1870s, Around the World with General Grant (1879)

Robert Greene photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Part of this is often misquoted as "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," most notably by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his I've Been To The Mountaintop https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm speech. Similar expressions were used in ancient times, for example by Seneca the Younger (Ep. Mor. 3.24.12 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/seneca.ep3.shtml): scies nihil esse in istis terribile nisi ipsum timorem ("You will understand that there is nothing dreadful in this except fear itself"), and by Michel de Montaigne: "The thing I fear most is fear", in Essays (1580), Book I, Ch. 17.
1930s, First Inaugural Address (1933)

John Kendrick Bangs photo
Pope Pius VI photo
Chief Joseph photo
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo

“There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming degraded, and those who did were denominated 'poor white trash.'”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

The system of labor would have soon exhausted the soil and left the people poor. The non-slaveholders would have left the country, and the small slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost.

Ch. 41
1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Jan van Riebeeck photo

“[T]hat our prosperity may never forget God's mercies shown to us, but always keep them in grateful memory.”

Jan van Riebeeck (1619–1677) Dutch colonial governor

Precis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope, December 1651 - December 1653, Riebeeck's Journal, H. C. V. Leibrandt, Cape Town 1897, p. 184

After two tough years since their arrival Jan van Riebeeck set apart the 6th of April and resolved to make it a day of thanksgiving and prayer.

Ellen Brown photo

“Money might... indeed become a servant of humanity, transformed from a tool of oppression into a means of securing common prosperity. But first the central bank needs to become a public servant. It needs to be made a public utility, responsive to the needs of the people and the economy.”

Ellen Brown (1945) American writer

The Fed’s “Emergency Measures” Are Becoming the New Normal, TruthOut https://truthout.org/articles/qe-forever-the-feds-dramatic-about-face/ (27 February 2019)

Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner photo

“If, ten years hence, there are three men of British race to two of Dutch, the country [i.e. South Africa] will be safe and prosperous.”

Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner (1854–1925) British statesman and colonial administrator

Milner on 27 December 1900, in private correspondence with Major Hanbury-Williams, as quoted by C. Headlam in The Milner Papers: South Africa, 1933, Cassell, p. 242

Rand Paul photo
Zaman Ali photo
Dorothy Thompson photo

“The easiest way to simplify society is to reduce it to a military organization. That is the most primitive form of social organization. And that is precisely what is being done. The unit of communal life shrinks. Wealth, prosperity, inventiveness, choice, demand are subordinated to simplified nationalistic aims. The very mind which created the liberal universe becomes atrophied through disuse.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 72

John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“We have been informed lately that ours will be the lot of Genoa, and Venice, and Holland. But...there is a great difference between the condition of England and those... We have during ages of prosperity created a nation of 34 millions—a nation who are enjoying, and have long enjoyed, the two greatest blessings of civil life—justice and liberty... [A] nation of that character is more calculated to create empires than to give them up, and I feel confident if England is true to herself; if the English people prove themselves worthy of their ancestors; if they possess still the courage and the determination of their forefathers, their honour will never be tarnished and their power will never diminish.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech in the Guildhall, London (10 November 1878), quoted in The Times (11 November 1878), p. 10. William Gladstone had written in The North American Review: "It is [America] alone who, at a coming time, can, and probably will, wrest from us that commercial primacy...We have no more title against her than Venice, or Genoa, or Holland, has had against us" ('Kin beyond Sea', The North American Review Vol. 127, No. 264 (Sep. - Oct., 1878), p. 180)

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Alexandra David-Néel photo
Kim Jong-il photo

“Our country is suffering from the lack of food. We don't have rice for the military. Our country is in a state of anarchy because of the dysfunctional food rationing system. The administration department is responsible for this mess, as well as the Party officials. The Party's Central Committee members have failed their duty in generating a revolutionary spirit, diminishing the Party's effectiveness. We must solve the food problem according to socialist principles, and we must not rely on individuals. If we let the people solve the problem on their own, only merchants and markets will prosper. Then, selfishness will rule our society and destroy our system of true equality.”

Kim Jong-il (1941–2011) General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea

Reported speech at Kim Il Sung University in December 1996, as quoted in Exit Emperor Kim Jong-il (2012) by John H. Cha and K. J. Sohn. Domestic collections of Kim's works do not confirm the speech or the wording, but an April 1996 speech to the Central Committee began with similar observations, and a "state of anarchy" arising from privatization in former socialist countries was a theme in earlier works.
1990s

Baudouin of Belgium photo
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo
Doug Ford photo
Felix Adler photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington photo
Wayne W. Dyer photo
C. P. Scott photo
Ivan Pereira photo

“Peace is the source of well-being and prosperity, and is, therefore, the goal of all political action.”

Ivan Pereira (1964) Indian bishop (born 1964)

Bishop appeals for dialogue, peace in Kashmir https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2019-08/india-kashmir-bishop-pereira-statehood-kashmir-peace-dialogue.html (August 2019)

Vajiralongkorn photo

“I want the unity shown here with this goodwill to be an encouraging sign for everybody, all sides to perform their duties for the prosperity of our country.”

Vajiralongkorn (1952) King of Thailand

Source: "Thai King praises 'unity' in speech on final coronation day" in Rappler https://www.rappler.com/world/asia-pacific/thailand-king-speech-final-coronation-day-may-6-2019 (6 May 2019)

Vajiralongkorn photo

“I and the queen are pleased and delighted to see the people having goodwill. Your unity in showing your goodwill is a good sign for everyone to do good things for the prosperity of the nation.”

Vajiralongkorn (1952) King of Thailand

Source: "Thailand’s new king addresses the public after his gilded coronation" in The Washington Post https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fY8Vv0ocxokJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/thailands-new-king-addresses-the-public-after-his-gilded-coronation/2019/05/06/b517354c-6e85-11e9-bbe7-1c798fb80536_story.html+&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us (6 May 2019)

Vajiralongkorn photo

“I shall maintain my loyalty to the country and honesty to the people. I will perform my duties to the best of my abilities with dedication, for the prosperity, peace and lasting security of the Thai kingdom, till the day I die.”

Vajiralongkorn (1952) King of Thailand

Source: "Pledge during an oath-taking ceremony at the ordination hall of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha after his investiture as Crown Prince" https://www.bangkokpost.com/specials/royal-coronation/royal_speeches.php (28 July 1972)

Vajiralongkorn photo

“I invite everyone here and all Thai people to share my determination and work together, each according to his status and duty, with the nation’s prosperity and the people’s happiness as the ultimate goals.”

Vajiralongkorn (1952) King of Thailand

Source: "'I shall reign with righteousness': Thailand crowns king in ornate ceremonies" in Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thailand-king-coronation/i-shall-reign-with-righteousness-thailand-crowns-king-in-ornate-ceremonies-idUSKCN1S924H (3 May 2019)

Ramzan Kadyrov photo

“Once there was a need for people like me to fight, to put things in order. Now we have order and prosperity ... and the time has come for changes.”

Ramzan Kadyrov (1976) President of Chechnya, former militia leader

Source: "Chechen leader, amid reshuffles, says ready to die for Putin" in Reuters https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-chechnya/chechen-leader-amid-reshuffles-says-ready-to-die-for-putin-idUSKBN1DR03I (26 November 2017)

Bob Inglis photo

“The pitchforks and torches can tear down and burn up but they can't build up the institutions and communities so necessary to a stable and prosperous country”

Bob Inglis (1959) Former U.S. congressman

Source: "Bob Inglis: How I changed my mind about climate change" https://www.npr.org/2021/12/03/1061214253/bob-inglis-how-i-changed-my-mind-about-climate-change, NPR (December 3, 2021)

Isaac Herzog photo

“Indeed, we both (Israel and Bahrain) want, above all, regional peace and mutual prosperity.”

Isaac Herzog (1960) Israeli politician

Source: Isaac Herzog (2021) cited in " Herzog wishes Bahrain's king happy national day https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/herzog-wishes-bahrains-king-happy-national-day-688999" on The Jerusalem Post, 16 December 2021.

Naruhito photo

“I sincerely hope that our country, through our people’s wisdom and unceasing efforts, achieves further development and contributes to the friendship and peace of the international community and the welfare and prosperity of humankind.”

Naruhito (1960) Emperor of Japan since 2019

Source: "Naruhito: Japan’s emperor formally proclaims enthronement in centuries-old ceremony" in CNN https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/21/asia/japan-enthronement-emperor-intl-hnk/index.html (22 October 2019)

Mutale Nalumango photo

“An integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens, representing a dynamic force in the international arena.”

Mutale Nalumango (1955) 14th Vice-President of Zambia

Source: Mutale Nalumango (2021) cited in: " SPEECH BY HER HONOUR THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZAMBIA MRS. W. K. MUTALE NALUMANGO, MP DURING THE OFFICIAL OPENING OF THE 42ND COMESA COUNCIL OF MINISTERS MEETING https://www.comesa.int/speech-by-her-honour-the-vice-president-of-the-republic-of-zambia-mrs-w-k-mutale-nalumango-mp-during-the-official-opening-of-the-42nd-comesa-council-of-ministers-meeting/" in Comesa, 9 November 2021.

Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor photo
John Adams photo

“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

John Adams letter to John Taylor, Of Caroline, Quincy, (12 March, 1819)
1810s, Letter to John Taylor (1819)

Sooronbay Jeenbekov photo

“We strive to build a prosperous society, which will be engaged in creative work, thanks to which citizens can have a decent rest, travel, and children have good health and receive a quality education.”

Sooronbay Jeenbekov (1958) President of Kyrgyzstan

"President Sooronbay Jeenbekov's address to the Nation in connection with the pandemic and the upcoming elections" https://mfa.gov.kg/en/Menu---Foreign-/News/News-and-Events/President-Sooronbay-Jeenbekovs-address-to-the-Nation-in-connection-with-the-pandemic-and-the-upcoming-elections (30 June 2020)