Economics

"Money couldn't buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy."

"And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, — what will compare with it?"

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes."

"Luat in corpore, qui non habet in ære."

"Since money does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, whether a commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes sellable and purchasable. Circulation is the great social retort into which everything is thrown and out of which everything is recovered as crystallized money. Not even the bones of the saints are able to withstand this alchemy; and still less able to withstand it are more delicate things, sacrosanct things which are outside the commercial traffic of men. Just as all qualitative differences between commodities are effaced in money, so money, a radical leveller, effaces all distinctions. But money itself is a commodity, an external object, capable of becoming the private property of an individual. Thus social power becomes private power in the hands of a private person."

"Money is not a thing, but a social relation."

"I who can have, through the power of money, everything for which the human heart longs, do I not possess all human abilities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their opposites?"

"Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history"

"Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc.,which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy."

"Capital is money: Capital is commodities. In truth, however, value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words, expands spontaneously. For the movement, in the course of which it adds surplus-value, is its own movement, its expansion, therefore, is automatic expansion. Because it is value, it has acquired the occult quality of being able to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs. Value, therefore, being the active factor in such a process, and assuming at one time the form of money, at another that of commodities, but through all these changes preserving itself and expanding, it requires some independent form, by means of which its identity may at any time be established. And this form it possesses only in the shape of money. It is under the form of money that value begins and ends, and begins again, every act of its own spontaneous generation. It began by being £100, it is now £110, and so on. But the money itself is only one of the two forms of value. Unless it takes the form of some commodity, it does not become capital. There is here no antagonism, as in the case of hoarding, between the money and commodities. The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money."

"It's no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money."

"Up and down the City Road, In and out the Eagle, That's the way the money goes— Pop goes the weasel!"

"One cannot help regretting that where money is concerned, it is so much the rule to overlook moral obligations."

"This currency is nothing more than the evidence of service having been rendered for which an equivalent has not been received, but which may at any time be demanded. It is obvious that as soon as it has been rendered, the evidence of its being due must be given up to the debtor to be destroyed, and it will be no longer current. And if any man can render services to his neighbours, he must in return receive either other services, or the evidence of their being due; and if he renders more services than he immediately requires in return, he will accumulate a store of this evidence for his future wants. ...It is quite clear that its use is to measure and record debts, and to facilitate their transfer from one person to another; and whatever means be adopted for this purpose, whether it be gold, silver, paper, or anything else, is a currency. We may therefore lay down as our fundamental conception that Currency and Transferable Debt are convertible terms; whatever represents transferable debt of any sort is Currency, and whatever material the currency may consist of, it represents transferable debt and nothing else."

"But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air, and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up, and it cankers and breeds worms."

"Only think about it, it’s mysticism. You take a paper, make a special drawing on it. And suddenly the magic begins. It’s not a paper anymore. It’s any thing. Any desire. Freedom. Conquered space… But the drawing has to be very precise. If one tiny curl is missing, it seems like it makes no difference. But that’s the end. The magic is already destroyed. The paper is just a paper. But if everything is in place, look at these iridescence, the subtle magical patterns, the strict lines!"

"As a rule, there is nothing that offends us more than a new kind of money."

"Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves."

"That's just a lie we tell poor people to keep them from rioting in the streets."

"Nec quicquam acrius quam pecuniæ damnum stimulat."

"We, as lawyers, as men of business, as men of experience, know perfectly well what evils necessarily result from handing over a great family estate to a mortgagee in possession, whose only chance of getting his money is to sacrifice the interests of everybody to money-getting."

"In essence, money is a lifeblood flowing through ourselves, our society, our global human community, and should be acknowledged and treated consciously."

"My expertise lies in international finance and money systems. This is why I have adopted here a whole systems approach to money. Whole systems take into account a broader, more comprehensive arena than economics does; it integrates not only economic interactions but also their most important side effects. This includes specifically in our case the effects of different money systems on the quality of human interactions, on society at large, and on ecological systems."

"Money is an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange."

"Your money's value is determined by a global casino of unprecedented proportions: $2 trillion are traded per day in foreign exchange markets, 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stockmarkets of the world combined. Only 2% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to the "real" economy reflecting movements of real goods and services in the world, and 98% are purely speculative. This global casino is triggering the foreign exchange crises which shook Mexico in 1994-5, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998. These emergencies are the dislocation symptoms of the old Industrial Age money system."

"Money is created when banks lend it into existence. When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000."

"Greed and competition are not a result of immutable human temperament... greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our national currencies. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive."

"While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for markets and resources, I claim that in reality they are competing for money - using markets and resources to do so. So designing new money systems really amounts to redesigning the target that orients much human effort... Greed and competition are not a result of immutable human temperament... greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our national currencies. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive."

"For the first time in human history we have available the production technologies to create unprecedented abundance. All this converges into an extraordinary opportunity to combine the hardware of our technologies of abundance and the software of archetypal shifts. Such a combination has never been available at this scale or at this speed: it enables us to consciously design money to work for us, instead of us for it. I propose that we choose to develop money systems that will enable us to attain sustainability and community healing on a local and global scale. These objectives are in our grasp within less than one generation's time. Whether we materialize them or not will depend on our capacity to cooperate with each other to consciously reinvent our money."

"Money is like an iron ring we've put through our noses. We've forgotten that we designed it, and it's now leading us around. I think it's time to figure out where we want to go--in my opinion toward sustainability and community--and then design a money system that gets us there."

"Jefferson "Jax" Jackson: Is there anything you think about other than yourself?Leonard Snart: Yes. Money."

"To borrow money, big money, you have to wear your hair in a certain way, walk in a certain way, and have about you an air of solemnity and majesty — something like the atmosphere of a Gothic cathedral."

"Money in the pocket, devil in the heart."

"Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!"

"Any man who spends his income, whether large or small, benefits the community by putting money in circulation."

"It would undeniably be a superb invention by laughter to imagine eternity in a financial predicament-ah, but then let us weep a little because temporality has so completely forgotten eternity and forgotten that from the eternal point of view money is less that nothing! Alas, many are of the opinion that the eternal is a delusion and that money is the reality, whereas in the understanding of eternity and of truth money is a delusion. Think of eternity in whatever way you want to; only admit that many of the temporal things you have seen in temporality you wished to find again in eternity, that you wished to see the trees and the flowers and the stars again, to hear the singing of the birds and the murmuring of the brooks again, but, could it ever occur to you that there would be money in eternity? No, then the kingdom of heaven itself would again become a land of misery, and therefore this cannot possibly occur to you, just as it cannot possibly occur to someone who believes money is reality that there is an eternity."

"Things are simply so arranged that not all men can have money. Prometheus and Epimetheus, you say, were undeniably very wise, but all the same it is incomprehensible that when in other respects they endowed men so gloriously it did not occur to them to give them money also."

"The spark for a relationship might come for free—a look, a word. But the fuel to keep it going would always be expensive. Money might not buy happiness, but the lack of money could buy endless unhappiness for any two people."

"Throw money at a problem and it will remain."

"No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction."

"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

"I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing."

"It is maintained by some that the bank is a means of executing the constitutional power "to coin money and regulate the value thereof." Congress have established a mint to coin money and passed laws to regulate the value thereof. The money so coined, with its value so regulated, and such foreign coins as Congress may adopt are the only currency known to the Constitution. But if they have other power to regulate the currency, it was conferred to be exercised by themselves, and not to be transferred to a corporation. If the bank be established for that purpose, with a charter unalterable without its consent, Congress have parted with their power for a term of years, during which the Constitution is a dead letter. It is neither necessary nor proper to transfer its legislative power to such a bank, and therefore unconstitutional."

"Alt. Translation: The love of money grows as the money itself grows."

"Increase of wealth increases our desires And hew, who least possesses, least requires."

"Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit, Et minus hanc optat, qu non habet."

"Lost money is wept for with real tears."

"Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit."