Quotes about Wealth

Your thoughts aren't yours.

And you are Responsible for your Mind.

Money often makes an ape of many a good man. Some are wealthy others want. Meagre means are no shame.

-Sayings of the Vikings-

Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.

Making money isn’t the backbone of our guiding purpose; making money is the by-product of our guiding purpose. "If you’re doing something you love, you’re more likely to put your all into it, and that generally equates to making money.

The invisible hand is crippled. What’s going on here? Wasn’t the invisible hand supposed to raise everyone into prosperity and well-being?

Yes – but it’s not. The world is getting phenomenally richer – but the costs of that wealth seem to be endemic poverty for vast swathes of the world’s population, the poisoning of the water we drink, the pollution of the air we breathe, and the fraying of the social and cultural fabric that binds us together.

We’re richer, but that wealth doesn’t reflect durable, authentic economic value – which is hitting fast diminishing returns. The growth that we’re pursuing is neither sustainable – nor is it, in many ways, real growth at all. Boardrooms from finance to autos to energy to pharma to fashion have learned that the hard way.

Weath is a measure of the degree to which we are willing to share intimacy with our world.

Paper money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for a moment by deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money: gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous….

What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups—or classes—of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy as far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the nonprogressive majority of the routinists and the public policies supported by them.

What is lacking to the underdeveloped nations is not knowledge, but capital.

The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.

There is an analogy between the patent granting power of government and its money granting power. When a citizen invents a device, the government grants him, through the patent office, a monopoly on the sale of it. When a citizen produces anything, he is at liberty to use it; but, if he wishes to sell it, his ability to do so is dependent upon his ability to find someone who has the money. Since buyers can have only such money as the government distributes through its purchases, loans and gifts (or such substitute money as its creature, the banker, will authorize) it may be seen that buying is subject to grant, just as, in the case of a patent, selling is subject to grant. In the case of patents, the patent holder is the grantee of veto power; in the case of money, the banker is the grantee of the veto power. These two are the breeders of our monopolies and of the two, the money granting and vetoing power is by far the greater. It in fact makes possible the acquisition of the patent granting power from inventors who, not having money power, are obliged to sell to those who have. The government, which promulgates laws against monopolies in restraint of competition, is itself the author of these twin creators of monopolies.

Contrary to popular belief, the banker is neither a money creator nor a money lender. He merely profits from the ignorance of businessmen by charging them for authorizing them to create money, a function that is natural to the buyer and which he can exert without cost if he is intelligent enough to form a reciprocal enabling pact with other buyers. The process involves no cost and, therefore, justifies no fee. Since the money is created only by the act of buying, the banker, of course, does not lend it, and since he is not the buyer, he does not create it. Money cannot be loaned or borrowed until it has been created by the act of buying. Therefore it is correct to say that a savings bank makes loans, but a commercial bank makes no loans. It merely permits "borrowers" to create money. thus increasing the money supply. Non-banking corporations, individuals, pawnbrokers, etc., loan money from the existing supply. Therefore interest may be justified in these cases of actual loans, whereas, it cannot be justified where the "borrower" is the actual creator.

As has been stated, the purpose of money is to split barter into two parts so that the seller is free to find his source of supply later and elsewhere. This is the sole purpose of money. Any effort to use money to serve another purpose is perversive; and this statement condemns the entire managed money philosophy.

Political economy is a fiction. Economy can have but one sphere, namely, in the practice of the individual. Political economy implies that the state can have a separate existance as a creative force, whereas, it is but one of the instruments of the individual's economy. All wealth - all economic planning - can spring only from the individual for his private guidance; and in him resides both the political and economic power. The ballot is his instrument of political power; money his instrument of economic power and the former is futile without the latter. He is a dupe, who believes that government can be both his servant and his patron, i.e., that the state can develop an economy to enrich him. He must govern government as he governs himself; and he must provide for government as he provides for himself. Any power existing outside himself is only that which has been delegated by him, or has escaped from him; for he is the one and only power-house. He cannot delegate his money power, if he would, because it is inseparably linked to his buying wherein he must exert his private discretion. To issue money, one must buy, to buy, one must appraise. Hence, the money issuing power is undelegatable and unusurpable.

Money can be issued only in the act of buying, and can be backed only in the act of selling. Any buyer who is also a seller is qualified to be a money issuer. Government, because it is not and should not be a seller, is not qualified to be a money issuer.

As long as we cling to the superstition that we must look to government for money supply, instead of requiring it to look to us, just so long must we remain the subjects of government and it is vain to follow this or that policy or party or ism in the hope of salvation. We can control government and our own destiny only through our money power and until we exert that power it is useless for us to debate the pros and cons of political programs.

Money power means budget power and it is folly to imagine that the citizen can control government unless he can control its budget.

When government is invested with money power it rises above the citizen and under the profession of protecting him may actually constitute the greatest threat to his well-being and safety. The power which control of the money system gives to government to interfere in and direct and even take the life of the individual should not exist on this earth. No man or group of men is warranted in holding this terrible power over fellow men.

Money is an instrumentality of the profit motive and must be issued and backed only by private enterprisers. Economic and political perversities are inescapable while government is admitted to money power. Since all national governments have, up to the present, been money issuing powers we may justly attribute all the economic and political ills of mankind to this single error.

The first cardinal truth of money is that no one, whether individual or government, can issue money without buying something. By inviting government to become a money issuer, we invite it to become our customer. Then we quarrel with it if it tries to buy something that we deem within the province of private enterprise.

The second cardinal truth of money is that money must be backed with something, and the act of backing can only be the act of selling. Since we object to government buying and selling anything useful, but nevertheless insist that it issue money, we force it into boondoggling or public works that do not conflict with our private enterprise. Thus we compel government to issue unbacked money by making it impossible for it to sell anything in exchange for the money it issues. As this process of issuing unbacked money continues, each unit grows weaker and thus the dosage must be increased. Hedged about, as government is, by our objections to its invading private enterprise and yet keeping it under the pressure to issue money, it is ultimately forced to the most consummate public works spending program, which is war.

When man has mastered money he shall have mastered not only his economic problem of prosperity but also his political problem, for he will see that money has no place in state functions, and, the money power being entirely in his own hands, he will easily master the state and clearly define its services. Thus money must be seen as the means of mastery of all economic and political problems. Until we have mastered money we shall not master any of our problems. Not money, but a false money system, is the root of all evil.

Representation of wealth is not the wealth. We have forgotten this. We regard money as wealth and debt as money.

"Our highest aspirations are our greatest possibilities"

There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.

The healthy model of economy is about right living, and only through right living will human beings stop polluting their world and begin to show respect, gratitude and love to the planet that sustains them.

To be satisfied with what one has; that is wealth

...a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.

Susie didn't get very excited when I told her we were going to get rich. She either didn't care or didn't believe me - probably both, in fact. But to the extent we did amass wealth, we were totally in sync about what to do with it - and that was to give it back to society.

In that, we agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society. In my case, the ability to allocate capital would have had little utility unless I lived in a rich, populous country in which enormous quantities of marketable securities were traded and were sometimes ridiculously mispriced. And fortunately for me, that describes the U.S. in the second half of the last century.

"A child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi . . . has the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."

Startups are not magic. They don't change the laws of wealth creation. They just represent a point at the far end of the curve. There is no conservation law at work here: if you want to make a million dollars, you have to endure a million dollars' worth of pain.