quotations about money
The jingling of a fat purse always commands the world.
DAVID GERROLD
Under the Eye of God
Money ... is founded merely on convention; its currency and value depending on the mutable wills of men.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Whatever you want must first be born in mind; nothing can come into the objective world that is not already in mind. Human beings have different wants and different ideals. While money in itself has no value except as it is employed as a medium of exchange, and to promote health, happiness and usefulness; hence, in the last analysis, money is an important factor in helping to bring into outward expression ideas and ideals, which are first born in mind.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Money", Human Life from Many Angles
The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
But the merchant, if faithful to his principles, always employs his money reluctantly for any other purpose than that of augmenting itself.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it.
EPICTETUS
The Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion and Fragments
Not teaching your kids about money is like not caring whether they eat. If they enter the world without financial knowledge, they will have a much harder go of it.
DONALD TRUMP
How to Get Rich
One must have been, at some time or other, in a situation where a small sum was as necessary almost as life itself, with no more ability to raise it than to raise the dead, before he can fully appreciate the value of money.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
'Tis money that begets money.
THOMAS FULLER
Gnomologia
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
JAMES BALDWIN
"The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy", Esquire, May 1961
No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.
LARRY MCMURTRY
Some Can Whistle
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain's Notebook
If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than truth or beauty.
JARON LANIER
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
Money often costs too much.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
If you wish to test a friend loan him money.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
When we lavish our money we rob our heir; when we merely save it we rob ourselves.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Gifts of Fortune", Les Caractères
Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.
JOSEPH GOEBBELS
"Nationalsozialisten aus Berlin und aus dem Reich", Voelkischer Beobachter, February 4, 1927
Money is a sort of instinct. It's a sort of property of nature in a man to make money. It's nothing you do. It's no trick you play. It's a sort of permanent accident of your own nature; once you start, you make money, and you go on ... But you've got to begin ... You've got to get in. You can do nothing if you are kept outside. You've got to beat your way in. Once you've done that, you can't help it!
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
One just spends as much money as one has. Very peculiar that! You never actually have any money. You think, If I had this much money ten years ago, I would have thought I was amazingly rich, but I still manage to spend it all and not have any left.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Paris Review, winter 1997
Money is freedom. Money is a private plane. Money is no metal detection.
50 CENT
Esquire, January 2010