Quotes About Wealth

If race or class war divides us into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate, one side or the other may overturn the hustings with the rule of the sword. If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all; and a martial government, under whatever charming phrases, will engulf the democratic world.

violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it. There may be a redivision of the land, but the natural inequality of men soon re-creates an inequality of possessions and privileges, and raises to power a new minority with essentially the same instincts as in the old. The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.

We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.

In progressive societies the concentration may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.

Since practical ability differs from person to person, the majority of such abilities, in nearly all societies, is gathered in a minority of men. The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history.

a pathological concentration of wealth, leading to class wars, disruptive revolutions, and financial exhaustion: these are some of the ways in which a civilization may die.

As long as there is poverty, there will be gods

Since wealth is an order and procedure of production and exchange rather than an accumulation of (mostly perishable) goods, and is a trust (the "credit system") in men and institutions rather than in the intrinsic value of paper money or checks, violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it.

Communism brought a certain security to all who survived the diseases and accidents due to the poverty and ignorance of primitive society; but it did not lift them out of that poverty. Individualism brought wealth, but it brought, also, insecurity and slavery; it stimulated the latent powers of superior men, but it intensified the competition of life, and made men feel bitterly a poverty which, when all shared it alike, had seemed to oppress none.V

Inheritance added superior opportunity to superior possessions, and stratified once homogeneous societies into a maze of classes and castes.

When abundance comes, and the danger subsides, social cohesion is lessened, and individualism increases; communism ends where luxury begins.

Ruin, comes when the trader, whose heart is lifted up by wealth, becomes ruler

The spirit of property doubles a man's strength. It is certain that the possessor of an estate will cultivate his own inheritance better than that of another.

In other cities the process of decentralizing wealth was not so legal: the debtors of Mytilene massacred their creditors en masse, and excused themselves on the ground that they were hungry; the democrats of Argos (370) suddenly fell upon the rich, killed twelve hundred of them, and confiscated their property.

Bracelets, necklaces, anklets, finger-rings and ear-rings made the women of Sumeria, as recently in America, show-windows of their husbands' prosperity.10

Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free. Some

all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.

How little you know the age you live in, says a god in Ovid, if you fancy that honey is sweeter than cash in hand.

We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation. IX

We recall Macaulay's warning that democracy would collapse when the poor used their electoral power to rob rich Peter to pay lazy Paul. Polybius expressed the same idea in 130 BC: When

He who steals from a citizen," said Cato, "ends his days in fetters and chains; but he who steals from the community ends them in purple and gold."17

the only difference in motive between the rich man and ourselves is seldom a difference in scruples, but is usually a difference in opportunity and skill.

Truth will not make us rich but it will make us free.

At the other end of the scale history reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.