Quotations by Theme

Wealth - Poverty

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"Men should be judged not by their tint of skin, the gods they serve, the vintage they drink, nor by the way they fight, or love, or sin, but by the quality of the thought they think."
Adela Florence Nicolson, 1865-1904

"Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don't help us, who else in the world can help us do this?"
Albert Camus, 1913-1960

"Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away."
Anaxagoras,

"The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong."
Antiphanes, 408 BC-334BC

"The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong."
Antiphanes,

"Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable"
Archibald MacLeish,

"Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money."
Arthur Schopenhauer,

"Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame."
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860

"Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could."
Barbara de Angelis,

"Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself."
Baruch Spinoza,

"He that is of the opiniorn money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money."
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790

"Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He who is content. Who is that? Nobody."
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790

"Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery."
Bertrand Russell,

"The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-

"Sometimes power is all a person has, so they will protect it even unto their own destruction, for without power they have nothing."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-

"Within the hearts of men, loyalty and consideration are esteemed greater than success."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-

"He plant trees to benefit another generation."
Caecilius Statius, 220-168 BCE

"False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared."
Charles de Montesquieu,

"Subdue you appetites my dears and you've conquered human nature."
Charles Dickens, 1812-1870

"Nature herself makes the wise man rich."
Cicero, 106-43 BCE

"He who will not economise will have to agonise"
Confucius, 551-479 BCE

"Money is our madness, our vast collective madness."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930

"Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude."
Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955

"Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think."
Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955

"In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all."
Denis Diderot,

"That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes."
Denis Waitley,

"What this means is that corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host."
Derrick Jensen,

"There is no failure except in no longer trying."
Elbert Hubbard, 1856-1915

"Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant."
Epictetus,

"Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire."
Epictetus,

"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980

"Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness."
Eugenio Montale,

"One thing's sure and nothing's surer The rich get richer and the poor get -- children."
F. Scott Fitzgerald,

"My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well."
Franz Kafka, 1883-1924

"From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization."
Friedrich Engels,

"Transnational, gigantic industrial companies no longer operate within political systems, but rather above them."
Georg Henrik von Wright, 1916-2003

"The first priority of any serious program against poverty is to strengthen the male role in poor families."
George Gilder, 1939-

"Anybody can see that the little money you get is half-wasted, because you cannot spend it to advantage. The worst food comes to the poor, which their poverty makes them buy and their necessity makes them eat. Their stomachs are the waste-basket of the State. It is their lot to swallow all the adulterations on the market."
George Jacob Holyoake, 1817-1906

"I live to hail that season by gifted one foretold, when men shall live by reason, and not alone by gold."
George Linnaeus Banks, 1821-1881

"The highest form of vanity is love of fame."
George Santayana,

"Melancholy has ceased to be an individual phenomenon, an exception. It has become the class privilege of the wage earner, a mass state of mind that finds its cause wherever life is governed by production quotas."
Gunther Grass,

"The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor."
H. L. Mencken, 1880-1956

"Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt."
Henrik Ibsen, 1828-1906

"These heroes of finance are like beads on a string; when one slips off, all the rest follow."
Henrik Ibsen, 1828-1906

"In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich."
Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887

"If the individual is a unit in a corporate mass, his life is not merely brutish and short, but dull and mechanical."
Herbert Read,

"Man is everywhere still in chains."
Herbert Read,

"To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism."
Herbert Read, 1893-1968

"The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor."
Isaiah Berlin,

"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor."
James A. Baldwin,

"What is fame? an empty bubble; Gold? a transient, shining trouble."
James Grainger, 1721-1766

"Problems come from the environment, the cities, the economy, the racism. They come from architecture, school systems, capitalism, exploitation."
James Hillman,

"I believe that my art gets across the point that I'm in this morality theater trying to help the underdog, and I'm speaking socially here, showing concern and making psychological and philosophical statements for the underdog."
Jeff Koons, 1955-

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
Jimi Hendrix, 1942-1970

"Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

"All wealth is the product of labor."
John Locke,

"Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
John Updike, 1932

"When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages. Religion is all profit. They have no merchandise to buy, no commissions to pay, and no refunds to make for unsatisfactory service and results.... Their commodity is fear. They blackmail their parishioners with threats of hell and damnation. These poor deluded people give them their hard earned money to save them from a hell that does not exist, and from eternal torment that was invented by the perverted minds of priests to rob the living and in addition, they are exempt from taxation! Insult to injury! Let me tell you that religion is the cruellest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race. It is the last of the great scheme of thievery that man must legally prohibit so as to protect himself from the charlatans who prey upon the ignorance and fears of the people. The penalty for this type of extortion should be as severe as it is of other forms of dishonesty."
Joseph Lewis,

"Consequently, most of us really exist at the mercy of other people's formulations of what's important."
June Jordan,

"A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror."
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931

"You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931

"Where can I find a man governed by reason instead of habits and urges?"
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931

"Friendship is always a sweet responsibility; never an opportunity."
Kahlil Gibran, 1883-1931

"The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite."
Karl Marx, 1818-1883

"It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness, poverty and wealth have both failed."
Kin Hubbad, 1868-1930

"Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love."
Lao Tzu,

"Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise. The Master has no possessions. The more he does for others, the happier he is. The more he gives to others, the wealthier he is. The Tao nourishes by not forcing. By not dominating, the Master leads."
Laozi,

"Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty."
Lee Rosten, 1908

"The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing."
Leigh Hunt,

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied."
Lucretius,

"Affluence creates poverty."
Marshall McLuhan,

"Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage."
Mason Cooley,

"Riches cover a multitude of woes."
Menander,

"Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible."
Michel de Montaigne,

"The poor give us much more than we give them. They're such strong people, living day to day with no food. and they never curse, never complain. We don't have to give them pity or sympathy. We have so much to learn from them."
Mother Teresa,

"Where wealth accumulates, men decay."
Oliver Goldsmith, 1730-1774

"What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?"
Orison Swett Marden,

"The man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer. He only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he is poor who though he has millions is covetous."
Orison Swett Marden,

"There is no real wealth but the labor of man."
Percy Bysshe Shelley,

"Five enemies of peace inhabit with us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace."
Petrarch,

"In outward show so splendid and so vain; 'tis but a gilded block without a brain."
Phaedrus,

"Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden."
Phaedrus, 15 BC-50AD

"The excessive increase of anything causes a reaction in the opposite direction."
Plato, 427-347 BCE

"Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent."
Plato, 427-347 BCE

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little."
Plato, 427-347 BCE

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
Plato, 427-347 BCE

"Do not speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself."
Plutarch,

"The reliance on property is...the want of self-reliance. [Men] measure the esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property.."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882

"Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882

"Joy is not in things; it is in us."
Richard Wagner,

"Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only to be sustained by neglect of many other things."
Robert Louis Stevenson,

"Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences."
Robert Louis Stevenson,

"What is necessary to keep providing good care to nature has completely fallen into ignorance during the materialism era."
Rudolf Steiner, 1861-1925

"He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature."
Socrates,

"The utter folly of our time is lamentable, that men should think to assist God with human help and to protect the Church of Christ by worldly ambition."
St Hilary of Poitiers, Fourth century

"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them."
T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965

"There isn't enough information, and no attempt is made to encourage people to know what's going on. But there is always rumour, the weapon of the poor."
Tahar Ben Jelloun, 1944-

"Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies."
Theodor Adorno, 1903-1959

"Not what I have, but what I do is my kingdom."
Thomas Carlyle,

"A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind."
Thomas Carlyle,

"Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy."
Voltaire, 1694-1778

"D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.""
W. Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965

"It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent."
W. Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965

"It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."
W. Somerset Maughan, 1874 - 1965

"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism."
William Osler, 1849 - 1919

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