Wealth

"To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it."

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

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

"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."

"With money, so they all profess — And I've no wish to beg the question — One cannot purchase Happiness Or Peace of Mind, or yet Success, Or a robust digestion; But one can buy a good cigar And plovers' eggs and caviare!"

"Money was made, not to command our will, But all our lawful pleasures to fulfil. Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey; The horse doth with the horseman run away."

"Money, now this has to be some good shit."

"I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. … I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. .. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected."

"Whoever said money can't solve your problems must not have had enough money to solve them."

"This bank-note world."

"Money. You don’t know where it’s been, but you put it where your mouth is. And it talks."

"The money pigs of capitalist democracy… Money has made slaves of us… Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood."

"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."

"Pecunia non olet"

"Ein Mensch, der um anderer willen, ohne dass es seine eigene Leidenschaft, sein eigenes Bedürfnis ist, sich um Geld oder Ehre oder sonst etwas abarbeitet, ist immer ein Tor."

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

"When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion."

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

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

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

"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."

"Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders... The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and... manipulates the credit of the United States."

"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?"

"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."

"On en trouve [l'argent] toujours quand il s’agit d’aller faire tuer des hommes sur la frontière: il n’y en a plus quand il faut les sauver."

"Let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrow money to do it with."

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

"The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money."

"I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money. Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"So pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho! So pleasant it is to have money."

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

"If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some."

"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!"

"Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money."

""I would not steal a penny, for my income's very fair— I do not want a penny—I have pennies and to spare— And if I stole a penny from a money-bag or till, The sin would be enormous—the temptation being nil."

""The love of money is the root of all evil". This throws us back on the fundamental weakness of humanity - the quality of desire. Of this money is the result and the symbol... Desire demands the satisfaction of sensed need, the desire for goods and possessions, the desire for material comfort, for the acquisition and accumulation of things... This desire controls and dominates human thinking; it is the keynote of our modern civilisation; it is also the octopus which is slowly strangling human life, enterprise, and decency; it is the millstone around the neck of mankind... There are, however, large numbers of people whose lives are not dominated by the love of money, and who can normally think in terms of the higher values. They are the hope of the future but are individually imprisoned in the system which, spiritually, must end. Though they do not love money, they need it, and must have it; the tentacles of the business world surround them; they too must work and earn the wherewithal to live; the work they seek to do to aid humanity, cannot be done without the required funds."

"Money is not coins and bank notes. Money is anything that people are willing to use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods and services."

"All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation."

"It would convert the Treasury of the United States into a manufactory of paper money. It makes the House of Representatives and the Senate, or the caucus of the party which happens to be in the majority, the absolute dictator of the financial and business affairs of this country. This scheme surpasses all the centralism and all the Caesarism that were ever charged upon the Republican party in the wildest days of the war or in the events growing out of the war."

"The lands and houses, the goods and merchandise and the money of the world are owned by a very few. All the rest in some way serve that few for so much as the law of life and trade permit them to exact."

"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."

"This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."

"The earning of money should be a means to an end; for more than thirty years — I began to support myself at sixteen — I had to regard it as the end itself."

"To make money honestly is to preach the gospel."

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

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility."

"Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides. [...] Remember, that money is the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding feline taint, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds."