Economics

"It is more easy to write on money than to obtain it; and those who gain it, jest much at those who only know how to write about it."

"Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him."

"Pecunia non olet"

"Sex is like money; only too much is enough."

"Simple rules for saving money. To save half: When you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count to forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five."

"A fool and his money be soon at debate."

"Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game."

"It may interest some if I state that during the last twenty years I have made by literature something near £70,000. As I have said before in these pages, I look upon the result as comfortable, but not splendid."

"A man will be generally very old and feeble before he forgets how much money he has in the funds."

"Money has been a consensual hallucination since we abolished the gold standard. It has value because we say it does. Why should a black-and-gold plastic rectangle be any different?"

"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal — that there is no human relation between master and slave."

"The love of money is the root of all evil."

"Not greedy of filthy lucre."

"It's something very personal, a very important thing. Hell! It's a family motto. Are you ready Jerry? I wanna make sure you're ready, brother. Here it is: Show me the money. SHOW! ME! THE! MONEY! Jerry, it is such a pleasure to say that! Say it with me one time, Jerry."

"Everyone in the world needs money – to get paid, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology and an inconvenient means of payment. You can run out of it. It wears out. It can get lost or stolen. In the twenty-first century, people need a form of money that's more convenient and secure, something that can be accessed from anywhere with a PDA or an Internet connection. Of course, what we're calling 'convenient' for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world. Many of these countries' governments play fast and loose with their currencies. They use inflation and sometimes wholesale currency devaluations, like we saw in Russia and several Southeast Asian countries last year [referring to the 1998 Russian and 1997 Asian financial crisis], to take wealth away from their citizens. Most of the ordinary people there never have an opportunity to open an offshore account or to get their hands on more than a few bills of a stable currency like U.S. dollars. Eventually PayPal will be able to change this. In the future, when we make our service available outside the U.S. and as Internet penetration continues to expand to all economic tiers of people, PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure."

"Ploutos, no wonder mortals worship you: You are so tolerant of their sins!"

"What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the bankers! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative; what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her!"

"Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life."

"Pecuniam in loco negligere maximum est lucrum."

"But the jingling of the guinea helps the hurt that Honor feels."

"What is fiat money? you may ask. Essentially, it is an inconvertible or unbacked currency usually issued by the government/central bank. Fiat money is currency of unlimited supply."

"Her life was a complete mess, true, but it could be straightened out. All it would take was money. Money could straighten out anything, if you had enough of it."

"Money can always be traced. It leaves a trail of slime behind it wherever it goes."

"The world over, private financial markets fail when it comes to the very poor, ... Mainstream banks do not seek out poor communities—because that’s not where the money is."

"The flour merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavour to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the interest."

"Meanwhile Hollywood has gone nuts. Carol [his wife] turned down a writing job for me at five thousand a week. She said, "Why Jesus Christ then I'd have to find a new bank every week." Just what in hell could a writing man do that would be worth five thousand a week. The whole place is nuts..."

"But as they all say if we sell our home what will we have for it, money, and what is the use of that money, money goes and after it is gone then where are we, beside we have all we want, what can we do with money except lose it, money to spend is not very welcome, if you have it and you try to spend it, well spending money is an anxiety, saving money is a comfort and a pleasure, economy is not a duty it is a comfort, avarice is an excitement, but spending money is nothing, money spent is money non-existent, money saved is money realised..."

"Everyone has to make up their mind if money is money or money isn't money and sooner or later they always do decide that money is money."

"If all the rich men in the world divided up their money amongst themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go round."

"Gold and silver are but merchandise, as well as cloth or linen; and that nation that buys the least, and sells the most, must always have the most money."

"In reality money, like numbers and law, is a category of thought. There is a monetary, just as there is a juristic and a mathematical and a technical, thinking of the world-around."

"Among the misconceptions of economics is that it is something that tells you how to make money or run a business or predict the ups and downs of the stock market. But economics is not personal finance or business administration, and predicting the ups and downs of the stock market has yet to be reduced to a dependable formula. When economists analyze prices, wages, profits, or the international balance of trade, for example, it is from the standpoint of how decisions in various parts of the economy affect the allocation of scarce resources in a way that raises or lowers the material standard of living of the people as a whole."

"οὐδὲν γὰρ ἀνθρώποισιν οἷον ἄργυρος κακὸν νόμισμ᾽ ἔβλαστε. τοῦτο καὶ πόλεις πορθεῖ, τόδ᾽ ἄνδρας ἐξανίστησιν δόμων: τόδ᾽ ἐκδιδάσκει καὶ παραλλάσσει φρένας χρηστὰς πρὸς αἰσχρὰ πράγματ᾽ ἵστασθαι βροτῶν: πανουργίας δ᾽ ἔδειξεν ἀνθρώποις ἔχειν καὶ παντὸς ἔργου δυσσέβειαν εἰδέναι."

"The citizens themselves are willing, by their follies and obedience to money, to destroy this great city."

"πολλοί τοι πλουτοῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται:"

"Bread is made for laughter, and wine makes life enjoyable; but money answers every need."

"Worldly success, measured by the accumulation of money, is no doubt a very dazzling thing; and all men are naturally more or less the admirers of worldly success."

"The brutality of a man purely motivated by monetary considerations … often does not appear to him at all as a moral delinquency, since he is aware only of a rigorously logical behavior, which draws the objective consequences of the situation."

"Money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of "how much?" Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money. All things lie on the same level and differ from one another only in the size of the area which they cover."

"Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power, Upon a shining ore, and called it gold; Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud, The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust of misery. But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living god and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue."

"Why, give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or an aglet-baby or an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two-and-fifty horses; why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal."

"Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on."

"For they say, if money go before, all ways do lie open."

"No, they cannot touch me for coining; I am the king himself."

"When I was stamp'd, some coiner with his tools Made me a counterfeit."

"Money never made any man rich. Contrariwise, there is not any man that hath gathered store of it together that is not become more covetous."

"People are often reproached because their desires are directed mainly to money and they are fonder of it than of anything else. Yet it is natural and even inevitable for them to love that which, as an untiring Proteus, is ready at any moment to convert itself into the particular object of our fickle desires and manifold needs. Thus every other blessing can satisfy only one desire and one need; for instance, food is good only to the hungry, wine only for the healthy, medicine for the sick, a fur coat for winter, women for youth, and so on. Consequently, all these are only … relatively good. Money alone is the absolutely good thing because it meets not merely one need in concreto, but needs generally in abstracto."

"Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money."

"Money moves in, and people move out."

"A Mafioso businessman’s number one priority is not to make money, but to hand out receipts in order to justify money that he already has."