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Money
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“To me, money is alive. It is almost human. If you treat it with real sympathy and kindness and consideration, it will be a good servant and work hard for you, and stay with you and take care of you. If you treat it arrogantly and contemptuously, as if it were not human, as if it were only a slave and could work without limit, it will turn on you with a great revenge and leave you to look after yourself alone.”
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“Many people called him a wizard of finance — which is not the same thing as a wizard of magic, though sometimes fairly similar.”
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“People keep telling us about their love affairs, when what we really want to know is how much money they make and how they manage on it.”
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“When you let money speak for you, it drowns out anything else that you meant to say.”
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“... there are only two ways to make a lot [of money] while you're young: One is to entertain the public; and the other is to cheat it.”
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“In any adversity gold can find friends.”
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“The dollar sign is the only sign in which the modern man appears to have any real faith.”
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“Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse, it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about.”
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“Money does not corrupt people. What corrupts people is lack of affection. ... Money is simply the bandage which wounded people put over their wounds.”
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“Some people confuse having a lot of money with being worth a lot of money.”
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“People who think money can do anything may very well be suspected of doing anything for money.”
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“You don't seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.”
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“I've never done anything for money, and that is why I got money. When you do stuff for money, you never get money.”
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“I have more money than God, but not as much as Oprah.”
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“The charms of money are distinctly under-represented in literature. There are no songs or poems extolling its virtues. This seems on the face of it strange. The claims of money to be celebrated in verse might well seem to be no less than those of faithful dogs, beautiful women, or jugs of wine.”
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“Those who never think of money need a great deal of it.”
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“Money ... is always the great clue to what is happening in the world.”
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“There are doubtless certain unworldly people who are indifferent to money. I myself have never met one.”
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“Of course I despise money when I haven't got any. It's the only dignified thing to do.”
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“Money's queer. It goes where it's wanted.”
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“... money-making is like a god possessing a priest. He never will leave you, until he has occupied you, wholly changed the order of your being, and seared you through and up and down. Then only would he eventually leave you, but nothing of you except an exhausted wreck, lying prone and wondering who are you.”
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“How a little money does help your self-respect!”
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“My brother was what he is now; I never had a cent that he didn't borrow. He calls it borrowing.”
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“The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'check enclosed.'”
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“If you would learn what God thinks about money, you have only to look at those to whom he has given it.”
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“I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.”
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“All banks should be under government control. Deposits guaranteed, dividends reduced, officials turned into state servants taking their orders from Washington ... ”
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“... if money had been the way to save the world, Christ Himself would have been rich.”
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“'Money does not bring happiness' — only the wherewithal, perhaps, to endure its absence.”
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“Sometime in the eighties, Americans had a new set of 'traditional values' installed. ... the poor and the middle class were shaken down, and their loose change funneled blithely upwards to the already overfed.”
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“... no one talks about money more than people who have too much of it ... ”
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“No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well.”
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“... the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”
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“ To money: The finest linguist in the world.”
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“It is impossible for human nature to believe that money is not there. It seems so much more likely that the money is there and only needs bawling for.”
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“... no share-pusher could vend his worthless stock, if he could not count on meeting, in his prospective victim, an unscrupulous avarice as vicious as his own, but stupider. Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him ... ”
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“You seem to think that everyone can save money if they have the character to do it. As a matter of fact, there are innumerable people who have a wide choice between saving and giving their children the best possible opportunities. The decision is usually in favor of the children.”
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“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.”
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“Money can be more of a barrier between people than language or race or religion.”
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“... a Man that wants Money thinks none can be unhappy that has it ...”
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“A fool and his money are soon married.”
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“Wall Street. — The abode of the Brokers and the Broke.”
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“Money is a great help everywhere; — can't have too much, if you get it honestly.”
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“I know Americans talk a great deal about the price of things — more, I consider, than is entertaining, sometimes!”
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“A little money's like a little snow, Lucy. Unless it's added to, it melts away.”
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“... nothing that costs only a dollar is worth having.”
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“Money counts more than you think.”
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“Corporations never actually mention 'money'; that would be vulgar. They prefer such words as 'turnover,' 'profit,' 'salary,' 'revenue,' 'budget,' 'premium,' and 'savings,' all much more refined.”
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“... he knew now, more than ever, that money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed and all he wanted.”
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“Money is a protection, a cloak; it can buy one quiet, and some sort of dignity.”
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“Money? Oh yes, he would like to have some, but not what went with it.”
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“There is nothing so costly as bargains.”
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“A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.”
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“Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.”
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“The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.”
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“Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.”
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“So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money?”
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“Money is the root of all good.”
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“... money ... is only important when you have none; and though it may not be everything, it goes a very long way towards blocking up the winter draft of age.”
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“... influence which is given on the side of money is usually against truth.”
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“You must have some money if you are going to live simply. It need not be much, but you must have some.”
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“It is no accident that stock exchange floors — in addition to bedroom floors — bring out the noisy blood, the flushed cheek, and the passionate cries of men. Most men are making love when they make 'magical' amounts of money.”
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“A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.”
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“Money destroys human roots wherever it is able to penetrate, by turning desire for gain into the sole motive. It easily manages to outweigh all other motives, because the effort it demands of the mind is so very much less. Nothing is so clear and so simple as a row of figures.”
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“Maybe money is unreal for most of us, easier to give away than things we want.”
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“What good is freedom if you've not got the money for it? It's all very fine to go on about Nora's escape at the end of A Doll's House but just how was she planning to eat that night?”
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“Only the powerless live in a money culture and know nothing about money.”
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“... though money is a fine servant, as a god, it does seem to develop all the evil qualities of the slave seated between the cherubim.”
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“... though the worship of riches is an old religion, there has never before been a danger that it might become the sole religion. And yet that is what is surely going to happen to the world ...”
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“... I found that my name signed to a check was even more welcome than when signed to a letter ...”
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“It's money that brings trouble. It always has and it always will.”
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“One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune, one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business.”
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“Money is poison.”
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“If I do not do sensible things about investments I shall spend my old age in a workhouse, where nobody will understand my jokes.”
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“Money is of value for what it buys, and in love it buys time, place, intimacy, comfort, and a private corner alone.”
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“I have a prejudice against people with money. I have known so many, and none have escaped the corruption of power. In this I am a purist. I love people motivated by love and not by power. If you have money and power, and are motivated by love, you give it all away.”
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“I must say I hate money, but it's the lack of it I hate most.”
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“It is very funny about money. The thing that differentiates man from animals is money. All animals have the same emotions and the same ways as men. Anybody who has lots of animals around knows that. But the thing no animal can do is count, and the thing no animal can know is money.”
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“When you earn it and spend it you do know the difference between three dollars and a million dollars, but when you say it and vote it, it all sounds the same.”
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“Well money is not easy to describe. It is easy to lose but it cannot be lost, and no one can get really get used to it.”
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“Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.”
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“More and more I am certain that the only difference between man and animals is that men can count and animals cannot and if they count they mostly do count money ...”
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“As a cousin of mine once said about money, money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.”
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“People who care nothing about money probably exist or we wouldn't hear so much about them. But I've never encountered one in the flesh.”
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“... light hearts seldom keep company with heavy coffers ...”
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“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it. But alone, it is not a diet designed to keep body and soul together.”
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“And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it?”
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“Whatever will bring in the most money will happen.”
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“Having money is rather like being a blonde. It is more fun but not vital.”
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“Now much of the country is made up of people with the acquisition habits of a 7-year-old, desire untethered from need, or the ability to pay.”
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“A faithfully kept program of savings and conservative investments can give you more money and a better life than that of your neighbors who spend everything they get. This is probably the oldest financial advice in the world, but there are some things you can't improve on.”
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“Everyone needs a small-town banker. Especially in a big town.”
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“The three immutable facts: You own stuff. You will die. Someone will get that stuff.”
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“Three reasons not to have a [spending] plan: 1. You're rich enough to buy anything you want and still have plenty of money left over. 2. I forget the other two.”
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“It seems like only yesterday that savers were dorks. They kept piggy banks. They drove last year's cars. They fished in their change purses for nickels while the superstars flashed credit cards. Today, values have changed. The new object of veneration is not money on the hoof but money in the bank — and the dorks all have it.”
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“Savings will not make you rich. Only canny investments do that. The role of savings is to keep you from becoming poor.”
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“There is a secret to investing that cuts a path directly to the profits that you're looking for. The secret is simplicity. The more elementary your investment style, the more confident you can be of making money in the long run.”
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“Never try to time the bond market. Anyone who claims to know the future of interest rates is certifiable.”
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“Quinn's First Law of Investing is never to buy anything whose price you can't follow in the newspapers. An investment without a public marketplace attracts the fabulists the way picnics attract ants. Stock brokers and financial planners can tell you anything they want, because no one really knows what's true. The First Corollary to Quinn's First Law states that, even when the price is in the newspapers, you shouldn't buy anything too complex to explain to the average 12-year-old.”
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“You don't date an annuity, you marry it. An annuity isn't a mutual fund that you buy today and sell tomorrow. Nor is it a certificate of deposit, ready for any new use at maturity. When you buy an annuity, you are making (or ought to be making) a 15- or 20-year commitment, at least.”
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“People say that money isn't the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.”
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“All right, so I spend money. Can you name one other extravagance I have?”
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“Money hasn't any value of its own; it represents the stored up energy of men and women and is really just someone's promise to pay a certain amount of that energy.”
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“Money responds to the way you think about it. Handle it fearfully, anxiously, and you will lose even that which you have. ... Handle it lovingly but freely, letting it circulate in divine order through your affairs, and you will always have plenty. Money is not to be loved for itself; but if it is disdained, it is mentally rejected, and it reacts accordingly. Money should be loved as just what it is: one of the channels through which God can express good in your life. Approach it with a friendly attitude, and it will respond by being friendly, too. It will always be around when you need it.”
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“Being young is not having any money; being young is not minding not having any money.”
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“The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.”
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“Now a Frende I have Founde / That I woll nother banne ne curse, / But of all frendes in felde or town / Ever, gramercy, myn own purse.”
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“Fame is a very good thing to have in the house, but cash is more convenient.”
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“Money is a needful and precious thing — and, when well used, a noble thing — but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for.”
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“Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes.”
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“Life was always a puzzle to me. When I had the youth I had no money; now I have the money I have no time; and when I get the time, if I ever do, I shall have no health to enjoy life.”
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“Money's a very serious thing — especially when you haven't got any.”
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“[On money:] It's a servant, and like all servants you've got to look out it doesn't get the upper hand. Use it, work it, don't let it drive you, don't let yourself think you can't do without it, don't let yourself believe for a single moment that it can give you any value you haven't got already. It's the other way round. It's you who give money its value by the way you spend it.”
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“It's surprising how soon you can get used to having money. It's much easier than getting used to not having it.”
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“I never knew a man who got so hurt in his pocketbook.”
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“Lack of money rivets us firmly to the ground, one's wings are clipped.”
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“What I have here is a complete indictment of our present-day society, our whole world. What's wrong it is money, honey, money.”
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“Money is both a means and a means to an end.”
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“When it comes to finances, it matters less how much money you make and more how you spend it.”
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“Money is everything in this world to some people, and more than the next to other poor souls.”
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“... if you want to know how God feels about money, look at whom she gives it to.”
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“With plastic credit showered on us every day, / We feel so singularly blessed / That we never pause to wonder if we're on the way / To a mammoth card-iac arrest.”
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“Regiments are joining in the Master Charge / That's blowing up the G.N.P. / Hardly anybody now remains at large / Who lacks creditability.”
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“Money is always dull, except when you haven't got any, and then it's terrifying.”
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“The 'almighty dollar' is the true divinity, and its worship is universal.”
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“Global commerce is driven by a single conviction: the inalienable right to earn profit, regardless of any human cost.”
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“Whenever I have tried to do anything For Money it has always led me astray.”
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“... there is no pleasure so sweet as the pleasure of spending money but the pleasure of writing is longer. There is no denying that.”
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“When moneys in a purse in my own pocket / It means wealth ...”
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“... I was struck by the absence, even among very young boys and girls, of any interior motivation; they were incapable of thinking, of inventing, of imagining, of choosing, of deciding for themselves; this incapacity was expressed by their conformism; in every domain of life they employed only the abstract measure of money, because they were unable to trust to their own judgment.”
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“Money is just another word for power.”
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“It was funny, Camilla thought, that people were so reluctant to lend one money when it was needed and so eager to when it was not.”
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“The people who are filing for bankruptcy in increasing numbers every year, it's not the poorest. It's not the people at the economic fringes. It's people who worked hard and played by the rules.”
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“The only thing I want from my money is to die in comfort.”
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“As soon as you bring up the money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral.”
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“I believe only in money, not in love or tenderness. Love and tenderness meant only pain and suffering and defeat. I would not let it ruin me as it ruined others! I would speak only with money, hard money.”
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“If you have all the money to do anything you want, it's amazing how soon there's nothing you want to do.”
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“Buy cheap and sell high is a rule of business, and when you control enough money and enough banks you can always manage that a stock you want shall be temporarily cheap. No value is destroyed for you — only for the original owner.”
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“Money never remains just coins and pieces of paper. Money can be translated into the beauty of living, a support in misfortune, an education, or future security. It also can be translated into a source of bitterness.”
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“The average family exists only on paper and its average budget is a fiction, invented by statisticians for the convenience of statisticians.”
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“Money is a metaphor and a reality. It provides choices but demands self-knowledge from us: We must decide what we are willing or unwilling to do for money.”
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“Money is today, as much as ever, the ultimate symbol of authority and autonomy, of power, ownership, and entitlement in the Western world. Money is the very essence of survival, a tangible measure of success and self-worth in our society, and making it is still the ultimate male prerogative. The rewards of money for women — which include economic security, nurturing, freedom — have historically resided in the illusory grace of others' generosity.”
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“And gold has no name, it licks the hand of anyone who has it: good dog!”
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“When people are collecting gold they aren't doing business. ... Gold is constipation: even bankruptcy is more fluid. Gold isn't wealth: positions in markets are wealth.”
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“Why, if all the rich men in the world divided up their money amongst themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go round.”
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“All new money is made through the shifting of social classes and the dispossession of old classes.”
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“... money that is in billions and monopolies isn't money at all, because the people have none, and money is democratic, everyone has to have some or there's none at all.”
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“... it's immoral to work to make money. There's something unlucky in it. You got to work for the work. You got to work on a farm, for the farm — then it makes money.”
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“Money is a jealous mistress If you want money you must want only money. ... I must tell you the one secret of life, there is only one: everything is a jealous mistress, everything is terribly possessive, and, by God, we want to be terribly possessed if we want to get somewhere — and we want to be terribly possessed — anyhow; or what is life?”
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“Money goes where money is, money yearns where money is.”
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“I believe that honor and money nearly always go together ... Seldom or never is a poor man honored by the world; however worthy of honor he may be, he is apt rather to be despised by it.”
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“In youth money is a convenience, an aid to pleasure. In age it is an absolute necessity, for when we are old we have to buy even consideration and politeness from those about us.”
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“Money may not be your best friend, but it's the quickest to act, and seems to be favorably recognized in more places than most friends are.”
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“... owning capital is not a productive activity.”
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“There are only two ways of making money: the hard way and the very hard way!”
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“The trouble with the new world we have watched being created over the past decade is that it sees no further than money. People have always been obsessed with money, of course — greed is as old as history. But when the institutions that govern all our lives forget there was ever anything else, then it gets dangerous.”
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“[On retirement savings:] Gone today, here tomorrow.”
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“Money that may never be spent is nothing but a miser's toy. Saving as an exercise in self-denial is an invalid goal, a sick use of money.”
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“The way in which we manage the business of getting and spending is closely tied to our personal philosophy of living. We begin to develop this philosophy long before we have our first dollar to spend; and unless we are thinking people, our attitude toward money management may continue through the years to be tinged with the ignorance and innocence of childhood.”
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“In the end, raising money is basically a matter of going out there and asking. There are no shortcuts.”
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“Cash is cold comfort under these circumstances. But make no mistake about it; It is some comfort.”
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“What was money that it should make such dreadful things of men and women?”
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“Money was their God; work their religion ...”
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“Money ... it's both the most complicated and the most passionate relationship in our lives.”
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“Solvency feels better than anything you can spend money on.”
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“People who are so arrogant on account of their wealth are about equal in civilization to Laplanders, who measure a man's worth by the number of his reindeer. A man with a thousand reindeer is a very great man. The aristocracy of wealth is the lowest and commonest possible. It is a pity that one meets it in America more than one ought to. One can even, in walking through the streets, hear the expression, 'He is worth so and so many dollars!'”
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“They are the kind of people who are embarrassed by money, a dead middle-class giveaway. Poor people are not embarrassed by money and are contemptuous of those who are.”
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“The practicing of thrift in one direction will be found to encourage the practicing of it in others, and saving will be realized to be no hardship when it is learned that present denial is going to make possible some future gratification.”
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“Money is what causes wrinkles. (Little kids don't have money, do they? And they don't have wrinkles.)”
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“Never talk rich, never talk poor, never talk money.”
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“On the floor of life the commodity is money. / You can buy and sell money, you can buy and sell absence of money, debt, which used to strike me as funny. / For some it's hedging, for most it's speculation. / In New York they've just introduced a futures contract in inflation. / (Pity it's not Bolivian inflation, which hit forty thousand per cent.)”
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“Verily what bishops are to the English, bankers are to Americans.”
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“People with little money seldom realize that people who have a lot of money are also frightened. ... If security is based on having money, it doesn't matter whether you have a little or a lot, you're going to be afraid.”
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“... Money speaks sense in a Language all Nations understand.”
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“The safer the investment, the smaller the return. A few investments are in fact so safe that they cost you money.”
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“The one real thing that money buys. Time.”
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“The quickest way to be rid of people is to lend them money.”
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“... that's what everybody wants, just a little more money, even the people who have it.”
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“The only people who claim that money is not important are people who have enough money so that they are relieved of the ugly burden of thinking about it.”
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“That's the worst thing about money — the moment you have some you begin to suspect everyone of trying to take it away from you. And usually they are.”
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“Money is an acquired taste. But, once acquired, it becomes an addiction.”
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“I never weep over lost money, for I figure I'd rather go to the poorhouse once than go there every day.”
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“When it comes down to it, it is only money that commands respect.”
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“Money is only money, beans tonight and steak tomorrow. So long as you can look yourself in the eye.”
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“It is frequently said that children do not know the value of money. This is only partially true. They do not know the value of your money. Their money, they know the value of.”
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“Money is meant not for hoarding, but for using; the aim of life should be to use it in the right way — to spend as much as we can lawfully spend, both upon ourselves and others. And sometimes it is better to do this in our lifetime, when we can see that it is well spent, than to leave it to the chance spending of those that come after us.”
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“A person who is careless about money is careless about everything, and untrustworthy in everything.”
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“... our right or wrong use of money is the utmost test of character, as well as the root of happiness or misery, throughout our whole lives.”
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“Rafe came by most of his money the old-fashioned way — he inherited it.”
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“... money is an acquired taste that grows as it is fed.”
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“When there was enough money for their needs, the ties between them had been strong, but once the money was lacking, what a strain was put on their love!”
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“... it's a funny life. Either you don't make a red cent and you have all the time in the world, or else you get double the money and you don't have a moment to spend a penny of it.”
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“There may be wonder in money, but, dear God, there is money in wonder.”
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“I've often known people more shocked because you are not bankrupt than because you are.”
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“Money creates taste.”
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“... what we do with money — how we use it, earn it, think about it, protect it, donate it, spend it, invest it and preserve it — is nothing more than a metaphor for how we feel inside.”
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“Money is always on its way somewhere; we are only a way station. What we do with it while it's in our keeping will say much about us — as will the direction it takes after we speed it on its way.”
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“Money is a mystery. Not only is our behavior with respect to money sometimes puzzling and erratic, but our feelings about money are often contradictory, illogical, deep-rooted, and scarcely known even to our most secret selves. We are getting better at handling money, but what it means to us, how we use it to express ourselves, and how it can help us become all that we are meant to be remain murky issues.”
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“Money isn't that important. It's what you do with it that counts.”
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“In America, money takes the place of God.”
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“If we aren't careful, our children will come down with 'affluenza,' a disease that causes them to confuse wants and needs. We need to teach our children what my grandmother taught me: Think twice about spending money you don't have on things you don't need to impress people you don't like anyway.”
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“In money matters no relationship counts; money hardens all hearts.”
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“It is true that money attracts; but much money repels.”
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“... he had never overheard Americans conversing without the word dollar being pronounced between them. Such unity of purpose, such sympathy of feeling, can, I believe, be found nowhere else, except, perhaps, in an ants' nest.”
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“'You think money the universal solvent?' 'I think the lack of it the universal insolvent.'”
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“Women's liberation as a movement makes some valid points. But in the final analysis, it doesn't matter who wears the pants — as long as there's money in the pockets.”
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“The most popular labor-saving device is still money.”
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“[On World War II:] The war, which destroyed so much of everything, was also constructive, in a way. It established clearly the cold, and finally unhypocritical fact that the most important thing on earth to men today is money.”
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“In my book, anyone pretending he has no interest in money is either a fool or a knave.”
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“Money in the hand is real — coins and bills. The rest I don't believe in, and I don't think I ever did, really. What's a check, after all, but a promise — mine, the bank's. Me, I know, but the bank?”
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“It's a grand thing to be able to take your money in your hand and to think no more of it when it slips away from you than you would a trout that would slip back into the stream.”
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“There are many excuses for the persons who made the mistake of confounding money and wealth. Like many others they mistook the sign for the thing signified.”
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“... money usually represents so much more than dollars and cents. It is tied up with our deepest emotional needs: for love, power, security, independence, control, self-worth.”
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“Almost everyone is uncomfortable talking about money.”
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“... when we find ourselves face to face with finance and conscience, what are we to do? For they are both charming things, but they will not mix.”
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“Both poverty and wealth are excellent things, because they are extremes, but the middle ground is damaging to the soul.”
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“The world of money, of numbers and stock markets and interest rates and credit cards, seems on the surface about as far as it could be from the world of spirituality, of seeking meaningful answers to the big questions of life. ... But these two worlds must flow in and out of each other, because it takes both money and spiritual understanding to sustain it. Truly speaking, what determines where our money with its awesome power will go, and what it will do for ourselves and others? If we listen, those answers come from the center of our being, from who we really are.”
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“Money is a living entity, and it responds to energy exactly the same way you do. It is drawn to those who welcome it, those who respect it. Wouldn't you rather be with people who respect you and who don't want you to be something you're not? Your money feels the same way.”
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“Messages about money are passed down from generation to generation, worn and chipped like the family dishes.”
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“I have come to think that money is very much like a person, and it will respond when you treat it as you would a cherished friend — never fearing it, pushing it away, pretending it doesn't exist, or turning away from its needs, never clutching it so hard that it hurts. ... if you tend it like the living entity it is, then it will flourish, grow, take care of you for as long as you need it ...”
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“There isn't a part of our lives that money doesn't touch — it affects our relationships, the way we go about our everyday activities, our ability to make dreams reality, everything.”
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“Once you begin taking care of your money, I can promise that your money in turn will take care of you.”
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“... people's feelings about themselves change when they change the way they handle their money. Once they begin treating their money with respect, their self-respect shoots up as well.”
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“Money is the only thing you can use even if you don't have any. ... There's always a credit card ...”
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“As our net worth falls, so does our self-worth. Ironically, it's when we don't have it that we most feel we have to flaunt it ...”
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“When you start really respecting yourself, those you love, and your money, the result is that you start having control over your money. What follows from that is control over your life.”
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“Money doesn't bring courage, I learned. It's the other way around. Once I took that lesson to heart, I began to rebuild my life.”
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“Probably is not a word I like to hear when I'm talking about our chances of recouping a huge investment.”
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“Some people think they are worth a lot of money just because they have it.”
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“Money alone can't bring you happiness, but money alone has not brought me unhappiness. I won't say my previous husbands thought only of my money, but it had a certain fascination for them.”
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“The true defense against wealth is not a fear of wealth — of its fragility and of the vicious consequences that it can bring — the true defense against wealth is an indifference to money.”
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“Being moderate with oneself and generous with others; this is what is meant by having a just relationship with money, by being free as far as money is concerned.”
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“Every child was taught from his cradle that money was Mammon, the chief agent of the flesh and the devil. As he grew up it was his duty as a Christian and a gentleman to appear to despise filthy lucre, whatever his secret opinion of it might be.”
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“Money isn't everything, your health is the other ten per cent.”
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“Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice.”
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“In our society, money is everything. For Americans, it is how we keep score.”
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“Money helps, though not so much as you think when you don't have it.”
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“The common principle in all our savings plans was that we learned this lesson: Pay yourself first.”
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“Money is not evil. There is no scarcity, except in our mind and attitudes. And what we believe we deserve will be about what we shall receive.”
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“Money and electricity are much alike. Both are stored energy. Living amidst electricity, using it constantly, you take its presence and its utility for granted. Treated with respect, it is constructive, tireless. Treated with disrespect, it is destructive, vicious. It will light your way, pull a twelve-car train from Washington to New York in a bit more than four hours, kill you or burn your house alike. Electricity is insulated, though, and children are not permitted to play with it.”
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“Financial freedom is having money enough so you don't need money.”
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“... money is a more taboo subject than sex. If you don't believe me, think about this: you have friends who tell you the intimate details of their sex-lives but they would be shocked if you asked them how much money they make.”
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“Get wisdom, but with all your getting, get wealth.”
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“Of all the activities you must cram into your busy life, managing your money is the one you can least afford to overlook. ... The biggest mistake you can make with money is neglect. You might as well leave your dollar bills outside in a high wind.”
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“Americans want action for their money. They are fascinated by its self-reproducing qualities ...”
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“Women don't get the credit they deserve — in more ways than one.”
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“Creatively pursued, the money game is indeed the most exciting game of all.”
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“I can't take it with me I know / But will it last until I go?”
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“She opened the door to them carefully, grudgingly, as if expecting to see gypsies or a brush salesman from a disreputable firm.”
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“Why snatch at wealth, and hoard and stock it? / Your shroud, you know, will have no pocket!”
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“The most powerful book in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century is the check-book.”
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“I am not greedy of money myself, but the monotony of always screwing and paring is more tiresome than the monotony of riches.”
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“... the engrossing pursuit of Americans is wealth.”
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“What a ready passport wealth gives its possessor to the good opinions of this world!”
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“Riches are always over estimated; the enjoyment they give is more in the pursuit than the possession.”
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“This is a speculating and selfish age; and to think 'money will answer all things,' is too much the characteristic of Americans.”
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“[On money:] A certain amount is a necessity. That amount changes with the times, of course, but anything over that is really unnecessary. I'm not just talking about enough for the bare essentials, either. Everyone develops a way to live, a style, that ultimately makes them feel comfortable, secure. For some it might mean Dubuffets and Dufys on the walls. I pity them, because that takes a fortune. For others, it may be roses in the garden and a machine that washes dishes. Without being greedy, which is a necessity for some sick people, everybody intuitively knows what they need. Desires are a different thing altogether. Money has nothing to do with them, but don't fall into the trap of confusing them with needs, either.”
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“Financial planning is like navigation. If you know where you are and where you want to go, navigation isn't such a great problem. It's when you don't know the two points that it's difficult.”
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“Rid yourself of the old myth, if it has been plaguing you, that money is not important. It is important — vitally important! It is just as important as the food it buys, the shelter it provides, the doctor bills it pays, and the education it helps to procure.”
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“The money game is not like any other game. You cannot choose whether you'll play, for the money game is the only game in town.”
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“You will find that free advice about your money is always available. It's usually those who lean back and give you the most 'positive' advice whose finances are bordering on catastrophe. They are often wrong, but never in doubt.”
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“You'll find that there will be an investment for every season, but there will be no investment for all seasons.”
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“Money is like a flower. If you squeeze it, you will crush the life out of it. You must let it blossom forth to reveal its full beauty.”
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“... one of the greatest deterrents to successful investing is the three-letter word ego.”
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“If you have never missed when investing, you haven't been in there trying.”
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“There are only three things you can do with a dollar: spend, loan, or own.”
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“A mutual fund can do for you what you would do for yourself if you had sufficient time, training, and money to diversify, plus the temperament to stand back from your money and make rational decisions.”
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“... there's a lot more satisfaction in thinking about money than in spending it, if people only knew.”
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“The idea that money brings power and independence is an illusion. What money usually brings is the need for more money — and there is a shabby and pathetic powerlessness that comes with that need. The inability to risk new lives, new work, new styles of thought and experience, is more often than not tied to the bourgeois fear of reducing one's material standard of living. That is, indeed, to be owned by possessions, to be governed by a sense of property rather than by a sense of self.”
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“They say that money is not everything. I say that when you don't have any, it is everything.”
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“The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards ... Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?”
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“Money is to such an extent the rule of the present age, that it is hardly possible to escape from its yoke ... money flies here, money flies there, constructs, demolishes, makes and unmakes positions; falls upon some in a very cataract, and crushes them; deserts others, and leaves them to starve; heaps up gold, hollows out graves, mingles everything, confuses everything, without order, and without plan in this age where so much is made of it.”
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“Where there is money, there is fighting.”
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“I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.”
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“Wanting money is an acceptable attitude. Learning to accept reality and make the most of what you have is also an acceptable attitude. Money is a way to make the world work for us; money also gives us the power to change things. It is okay to prosper. The total amount of money you have is not the significant item — the attitude you have about it is.”
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“Money is an accident. Now you and your family have it; now you haven't.”
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“... money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”