“Naked greed has been the moving spirit of civilization from the first day of its existence to the present time; wealth, more wealth, and wealth again; wealth not of society, but of this shabby individual was its sole and determining aim.”— Friedrich Engels, amazon.com
“Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become.”— Arthur Schopenhauer, amazon.com
“Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country.”— Ron Paul, ronpaul.com
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”— Oscar Wilde, amazon.com
“Wealth is production. There may be prospective wealth, putative wealth, potential wealth, in the soil, in the ore veins, in various latent forms—but actual wealth is only that which has been produced into things men require. The more there is of production, therefore, the more there is of wealth.”— William Randolph Hearst, newspapers.com
“O you rich, remember Death; for when the time shall come and you shall draw near to him there, you shall not use your wealth and possessions.”— Aphrahat, amazon.com
“What people want is a vibrant economy. They don't care if Bill Gates gets richer. They want to know: Is my paycheck going up? Are my prospects improving?”— Steve Forbes, cnbc.com
“We think that if we have health and wealth they’re enough to be happy, but actually happiness depends on the state of our minds.”— Dalai Lama, twitter.com
“Knowing these seemingly inexpensive social norms is itself a rite of passage into today’s aspirational class. And that rite is far from costless: The Economist subscription might set one back only $100, but the awareness to subscribe and be seen with it tucked in one’s bag is likely the iterative re…”— Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, bbc.com
“Given that everyone can now buy designer handbags and new cars, the rich have taken to using much more tacit signifiers of their social position.”— Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, bbc.com
“Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. Oh, it was a funny world.”— Liane Moriarty, amazon.com
“Do not flaunt yourselves as was the flaunting of finer in the earlier times of ignorance.”— 33:33 (Surah al-Ahzab), amazon.com
“The biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don’t see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you’re surrounded by people who say ‘I want mine now,’ you end up with a few people with everything and a…”— Morrie Schwartz, amazon.com
“I don’t think that having great wealth in itself is fundamentally immoral. It depends what you do with it. If, let’s say, you take someone like Warren Buffett—if he was clearsighted about the fact that he was going to use this wealth for good, as he is doing by donating it to the Gates Foundation, a…”— Peter Singer, theconcourse.deadspin.com
“When I give talks, people often stand up and say ‘The problem is poverty is global capitalism, that’s what we need to change. Why are you talking about these band-aid solutions?’ I always ask them, how do we actually do that? How do we actually get rid of global capitalism? Nobody’s given me even ha…”— Peter Singer, theconcourse.deadspin.com
“The tech millionaires have no flair, but they will live forever.”— Hamilton Nolan, theconcourse.deadspin.com
“We can't all be happy, we can't all be rich, we can't all be lucky — and it would be so much less fun if we were.”— Jean Rhys, amazon.com
“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they have ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”— Khloé Kardashian, amazon.com