Commerce

""Get Money, money still! And then let virtue follow, if she will." This, this the saving doctrine preach'd to all, From low St. James' up to high St. Paul."

"Trade it may help, society extend, But lures the Pirate, and corrupts the friend: It raises armies in a nation's aid, But bribes a senate, and the land's betray'd."

"When Gold argues the cause, eloquence is impotent."

"Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money."

"Point d'argent, point de Suisse."

"Money and friendship bribe justice. Beauty is potent, but money is omnipotent."

"Judas: I don't need your blood money!"

"Ohhhh All I see is signs All I see is dollar signs Ohhhh Money on my mind Money, money on my mind."

"I am more concerned with the return of my money than the return on my money."

"Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repainting."

"The lifeblood of our economy, indeed the whole world's economy, is based on money. Without a currency that can be trusted, the entire structure of economics, the division of labor itself, falls apart. Our wealth, our well being and our very lives are dependent on the continuation of this highly complex structure called the economy and it in turn is dependent on sound money. We have placed our trust for the management of this money on a gang of thieves called the Federal Reserve. They have now clearly demonstrated their inability to restrain themselves from the excesses that can be perpetrated within a paper money system. If we want to survive as a nation, we need to eliminate both the Federal Reserve and paper money."

"It is when money looks like manna that we truely delight in it."

"Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil."

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."

"Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by Compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming self-sacrifice you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot."

"I think it a greater theft to Rob the dead of their Praise, then the Living of their Money."

"Money can make you do ghastly things."

"I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake."

"Never allow yourself to get caught without a loose million handy."

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."

"I worship freedom; I abhor restraint, trouble, dependence. As long as the money in my purse lasts, it assures my independence; it relieves me of the trouble of finding expedients to replenish it, a necessity which has always inspired me with dread; but the fear of seeing it exhausted makes me hoard it carefully. The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom.; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery. Therefore I hold fast to that which I have, and desire nothing."

"Money is the source of all the false ideas of society."

"The best way to keep money in perspective is to have some."

"Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money,—he never knows. He doesn't make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it."

"Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings."

"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."

"Money moves in, and people move out."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"πολλοί τοι πλουτοῦσι κακοί, ἀγαθοὶ δὲ πένονται:"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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..."

"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..."