quotations about money
Money is part of the private capital of an individual only if and so far as it constitutes a means by which the individual in question can obtain other capital goods.
LUDWIG VON MISES
Theory of Money and Credit
The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Money ... is founded merely on convention; its currency and value depending on the mutable wills of men.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty.
JARON LANIER
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.
JOSEPH GOEBBELS
"Nationalsozialisten aus Berlin und aus dem Reich", Voelkischer Beobachter, February 4, 1927
'Tis money that begets money.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
The jingling of a fat purse always commands the world.
DAVID GERROLD
Under the Eye of God
If you wish to test a friend loan him money.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain's Notebook
Money often costs too much.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
Whatever you want must first be born in mind; nothing can come into the objective world that is not already in mind. Human beings have different wants and different ideals. While money in itself has no value except as it is employed as a medium of exchange, and to promote health, happiness and usefulness; hence, in the last analysis, money is an important factor in helping to bring into outward expression ideas and ideals, which are first born in mind.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Money", Human Life from Many Angles
If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it.
EPICTETUS
The Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion and Fragments
No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.
LARRY MCMURTRY
Some Can Whistle
One must have been, at some time or other, in a situation where a small sum was as necessary almost as life itself, with no more ability to raise it than to raise the dead, before he can fully appreciate the value of money.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Not teaching your kids about money is like not caring whether they eat. If they enter the world without financial knowledge, they will have a much harder go of it.
DONALD TRUMP
How to Get Rich
It is easy, of course, to point out the dangers resulting from a too intense devotion to money-getting. Bacon calls riches "the baggage of virtue"; and we all know how the Romans, in their heroic days, when they annihilated their foes, expressed their contempt by a similar word, impedimenta; and that when they grew weak and degraded they clung to their gold, with which they bought off the barbarians who invaded them. But whatever may be said of the dangers of riches, the dangers of poverty are tenfold greater. A condition in which one is exposed to continual want, not only of the luxuries but of the veriest necessaries of life, as well as to disease and discouragement, is exceedingly unfavorable to the exercise of the higher functions of the mind and soul. The poor man is hourly beset by troops of temptations which the rich man never knows. Doubtless the highest virtues are sometimes found to flourish even in the cold clime and sterile soil of poverty. Not only industry, honesty, frugality, perseverance amid hardships and ever-baffling discouragement, severe self-sacrifice, tender affections, unwavering trust in Providence, all are formed blooming in the hearts of the poorest poor--even in the sunless regions of absolute destitution, where honesty might be expected to wear an everlasting scowl of churlishness, and a bitter disbelief in the love of God to accompany obedience to the laws of man. But it is the most insufferable of all cants to hear these qualities spoken of as if they were indigenous to poverty, when we know that they flourish in spite of it.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
"Money--Its Use and Abuse", Hints on Success in Life
Money is freedom. Money is a private plane. Money is no metal detection.
50 CENT
Esquire, January 2010
Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Discourse on Inequality
One just spends as much money as one has. Very peculiar that! You never actually have any money. You think, If I had this much money ten years ago, I would have thought I was amazingly rich, but I still manage to spend it all and not have any left.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Paris Review, winter 1997
You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof