Quotes About Wealth

The most obvious and yet the oldest and most stubborn error on which the appeal of inflation rests is that of confusing ‘money’ with ‘wealth’…Real wealth, of course, consists in what is produced and consumed: the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in. It is railways and roads and motor cars; ships and planes and factories; schools and churches and theaters; pianos, paintings and books. Yet so powerful is the verbal ambiguity that confuses money with wealth, that even those who at times recognize the confusion will slide back into it in the course of their reasoning.

A rentier is an investor whose relationship to a company or enterprise is strictly limited to the ownership of financial wealth (such as stocks or bonds) and the receipt of income on that wealth (such as dividends or interest). The financial system performs dismally at its advertised task, that of efficiently directing society's savings towards their optimal investment pursuits. The system is stupefyingly expensive, gives terrible signals for the allocation of capital, and has surprisingly little to do with real investment.

Leisure, itself the creation of wealth, is incessantly engaged in transmuting wealth into beauty by secreting the surplus energy which flowers in great architecture, great painting and great literature. Only in the atmosphere thus engendered floats that impalpable dust of ideas which is the real culture. A colony of ants or bees will never create a Parthenon.

The information revolution has changed people's perception of wealth. We originally said that land was wealth. Then we thought it was industrial production. Now we realize it's intellectual capital. The market is showing us that intellectual capital is far more important that money. This is a major change in the way the world works. the same thing that happened to the farmers during the Industrial Revolution is now happening to people in industry as we move into the information age.

The only wealth you keep is the wealth that you give away.

[Barack] Obama, for example, he has not given up on cap-and-trade. Now, he has not been able to pass cap-and-trade, but cap-and-trade is all about redistribution of wealth in a global basis - taking money out of this country and giving it to third-world countries on the other end of the ocean. And that is redistribution of wealth in a global basis. It's fundamental Marxism.

Securing, not prohibiting, the orderly transfer of wealth from A to B, based on wealth differentials, is the raison d'être of the [New Deal programs]. The contrast between the modern progressive and classical liberal agendas could not be more explicit.

I'm not calling for redistributing wealth; I'm calling for reinvigorating our stuck energy sector, so some new entrepreneurs can create some new wealth.

My experience indicates that most people who've accumulated a great deal of wealth haven't had that as their goal at all. Wealth is only a by-product, not the original motivation.

Big government inevitably drives an upward distribution of wealth to those whose wealth, confidence and sophistication enable them to manipulate government.

They talk about class warfare -- the fact of the matter is there has been class warfare for the last thirty years. It's a handful of billionaires taking on the entire middle-class and working-class of this country. And the result is you now have in America the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth and the worst inequality in America since 1928. How could anybody defend the top 400 richest people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people?

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place.

Wealth is the hidden side of speed and speed the hidden side of wealth.

Those who want to "spread the wealth" almost invariably seek to concentrate the power. It happens too often, and in too many different countries around the world, to be a coincidence. Which is more dangerous, inequalities of wealth or concentrations of power?

American labor will realize that its function is not to increase jobs, but to multiply the wealth and to expand the numbers benefited by the wealth at the swiftest possible rate.

The lower half of households by wealth held just 3% of wealth in 1989 and only 1% in 2013.

People who have drawn wealth into their lives used The Secret, whether consciously or unconsciously. They think thoughts of abundance and wealth, and they do allow any contradictory thoughts to take root in their minds.

The wealth of the soul is the only true wealth.

I don’t understand all the nuances of the women’s movement. But I do understand that there are feminists who want to challenge the dominant paradigm, not only of patriarchy, but of where the original wealth came from and the relationship of that wealth to other peoples and the earth. That is the only way that that I think you can really get to the depth of the problem.

In the words of Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, we have a choice between a democracy or vast concentrations of wealth. We have vast concentrations of wealth which has bought its way into our democracy with its political leaders who exemplify the merger of that economic and political elite.

Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty.

The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity... that's all there is. That's the whole economy. That's where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world.

The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.

All of the great ideas, without action, become stale and useless. The key to turning dreams into reality is action. People who have great ideas are a dime a dozen. People who act on their dreams and ideas are the select few, but they are the ones who gain the wealth, wealth and wisdom that is available. Someone will act today. Let it be you.

You may be trying to attain power in this world, then you start trying to attain power in that world. First you want to attain wealth in this world, then you try to attain wealth in that world. But you remain the same, and the mind and the functioning and the whole scheme remains the same: Attain! Reach! This is the ego trip. The achieving mind is the ego.

In our society, the best predictor of a man's wealth is his wife's looks, and the best predictor of a woman's looks is her husband's wealth.

The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues-not faction, but rather distraction-there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil . . . Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth.

Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

Jesus teaches the redistribution of wealth - as long as the transfer is voluntary. But he is adamantly opposed to the involuntary redistribution of wealth, because that violates the moral law of God and is profoundly wrong. His words to take care of the poor are not addressed to government, they are addressed to us.

Virtue does not come from wealth, but wealth, and every other good thing which men have comes from virtue.

What must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust!

We've created more wealth in the past 30 years than the rest of human of human history combined. But half of Americans make less than $17 an hour.

What is the most profitable? Fellowship with the good. What is the worst thing in the world? The society of evil men. What is the greatest loss? Failure in one?s duty. Where is the greatest peace? In truth and righteousness. Who is the hero? The man who subdues his senses. Who is the best beloved? The faithful wife. What is wealth? Knowledge. What is the most perfect happiness? Staying at home.

Wealth is the smallest thing on earth, the least gift that God has bestowed on mankind.

Just look at what this corrupt establishment has done to our cities like Detroit; Flint, Michigan; and rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and all across our country. Take a look at what's going on. They stripped away these town bare. And raided the wealth for themselves and taken our jobs away out of our country never to return unless I'm elected president.

Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter.

The top 400 people own more wealth now than the bottom 185 million Americans taken together. That is a medieval structure.

His guilt is why Acheron went out of his way to make sure that all of you had servants and pay for your work. The Dark-Hunters owe that man everything, and I do mean everything. He pays in blood every time one of you wants to go free, and he suffers every day so that you can all live your cushy little lives of wealth and privilege.” … “And I have to say that every time one of your turns on him, it seriously pisses me off. Acheron asks nothing from any of you and that’s exactly what he receives.

Both poverty and wealth are excellent things, because they are extremes, but the middle ground is damaging to the soul.

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.

I believe I have demonstrated that the voters are characteristically ill-informed when voting on reducing social costs. Furthermore, their primary concern is with wealth transferred to themselves, rather than with social cost efficiency. Logically, this would mean that democratic government would be inefficient in reducing social costs.

And what is friendship but a name, A charm that lulls to sleep, A shade that follows wealth or fame, And leaves the wretch to weep?

If your everyday life appears to be unworthy subject matter, do not complain to life. Complain to yourself, Lament that you are not poet enough to call up its wealth.

The value of three things is justly appreciated by all classes of men: youth, by the old; health, by the diseased; and wealth, by the needy.

Capital, never concerned with distribution, is now less and less concerned with production. Capital is driving for power, for the control over markets, lands, resources. Capital, in corporate hands, can move anywhere and thus demand and get the utmost in concessions and privileges as well as the freedom to operate in the interest of ever-increasing wealth and assets.

It is, however, not to the museum, or the lecture-room, or the drawing- school, but to the library, that we must go for the completion of our humanity. It is books that bear from age to age the intellectual wealth of the world.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

There is this fashionable progressive notion that everything is so completely political that the idea we could have some sort of neutral legal process is practically utopian - because we all know that the more money you have, the more rights you can exercise in this society. But I don't think that you deal with income inequality by limiting the First Amendment rights of affluent people. I'd rather see people screw around with the tax code to redistribute wealth a little bit than screw around with the First Amendment.