Money and Wealth

The richest monarch in the Christian world; The sun in my own dominions never sets. 3

 

Kingdoms are but cares, State is devoid of stay; Riches are ready snares, And hasten to decay.

 

I am dying, as I have lived, beyond my means.

In all things connected with money I have had a luck so extraordinary that sometimes it has made me almost afraid. I remember havingread somewhere, in some strange book, that when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

The recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.

Rabbit realized the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporaryarrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of the money. You just passedthrough, and they milked you for what youwere worth, mostly when you were young andgullible.

In no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States; nowhere does the majority display less inclination for those principles which threaten to alter, in whatever manner, the laws of property.

The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, as either a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do; this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness.

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.

If Heaven had looked upon riches to be avaluable thing, it would not have given them tosuch a scoundrel.

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.

[ On looking at an expensive shop :] How many things I can do without!

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expence either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.

The rich . . . divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal proportions among all its inhabitants.

[ Referring to film producer Samuel Goldwyn :] Well, Mr. Goldwyn, there is not much use in going on. There is this difference between you and me: You are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.

I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labor required to produce it; price, the quantity of labor which its possessor will take in exchange for it.

Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere.

Out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. . . . The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business.

The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory . . . was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward . . . through the ranks.

Usura slayeth the child in the wombIt stayeth the young man’s courtingIt hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom CONTRA NATURAM