Quotes About Prosperity

What seems extraordinary is that the richest countries in the world, in terms of economic output, are the ones where we work hardest.

Municipal debt outstanding doubled in the past 10 years. And in the past 30 years, the U.S. has been in real economic nirvana.

The world over, it was believed that, down the line, India will emerge as a major economy along with U.S. and China.

Get rid of pride, and riches will do no harm.

Zijn ambtswoning lag om de hoek, in de Pelikaanstraat. Niet ver van onze diamantbeurs, die ondanks alle krijgsperikelen en gevluchte slijpers toch aan bedrijvigheid leek te herwinnen. Het steentje. Zo noemen wij, met onze kluchtige voorliefde voor verkleinwoorden, de industrie die onze stad al eeuwen onderstut en opstuwt. Zolang het steentje draait, draait de wereld rond. En zolang dat gebeurt, komt diezelfde wereld bij ons haar edelstenen kopen, klieven en verkopen.

In his first year in office, President Obama pulled us back from the brink of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and worked to lay a new foundation for economic growth. The president identified three key strategies to build that lasting prosperity: innovation, investment, and education.

You hear preachers say that the prosperity gospel doesn't work but I say that it's worked for the preachers who preach it.

If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain, if you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees, if you want a hundred years of prosperity, grow people. Chinese proverb

Education is the best economic policy there is.

Because it's not how much money you make that matters, it's how much money you keep.

Every one of our greatest national treasures, our liberty, enterprise, vitality, wealth, military power, global authority, flow from a surprising source: our ability to give thanks.

You need rich people in your society not so much because in spending their money they create jobs, but because of what they have to do to get rich. I'm not talking about the trickle-down effect here. I'm not saying that if you let Henry Ford get rich, he'll hire you as a waiter at his next party. I'm saying that he'll make you a tractor to replace your horse.

So although there may be, in certain specific moments (like your family, this month) a fixed amount of money available to trade with other people for things you want, there is not a fixed amount of wealth in the world.

You need rich people in your society not so much because in spending their money they create jobs, but because of what they have to do to get rich.

The answer (or at least the proximate cause) may be that the Europeans rode on the crest of a powerful new idea: allowing those who made a lot of money to keep it.

Wealth is what you want, not money.

People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage — just a shorthand — for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.4

What made the Florentines rich in 1200 was the discovery of new techniques for making the high-tech product of the time, fine woven cloth. What made the Dutch rich in 1600 was the discovery of shipbuilding and navigation techniques that enabled them to dominate the seas of the Far East.

This was naturally a great incentive, and possibly indeed the main cause of the second big change, industrialization. A great deal has been written about the causes of the Industrial Revolution. But surely a necessary, if not sufficient, condition was that people who made fortunes be able to enjoy them in peace.

Once you're allowed to do that, people who want to get rich can do it by generating wealth instead of stealing it.

Once it became possible to get rich by creating wealth, society as a whole started to get richer very rapidly. Nearly everything we have was created by the middle class. Indeed, the other two classes have effectively disappeared in industrial societies, and their names been given to either end of the middle class. (In the original sense of the word, Bill Gates is middle class.)

People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage — just a shorthand — for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.

Only when people are free to worship, create, and build, only when they can decide their destiny and benefit from their own risks—only then do societies become dynamic, prosperous.

Incentives aren't the only thing that matter for economic growth. Opportunity is also crucial, and extreme inequality deprives many people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and government programs that reduce inequality can make the nation as a whole richer by reducing that waste.