Quotes About Wealth

The wealthy also play an ever larger role in deciding who lives and who dies. Or, more specifically, which medical problems get conquered versus which are neglected.

the pet health interests of rich people may or may not line up with what society overall should give priority to in seeking medical breakthroughs. As the Times warned: "The philanthropists' war on disease risks widening that gap, as a number of the campaigns, driven by personal adversity, target illnesses that predominantly afflict white people—like cystic fibrosis, melanoma and ovarian cancer.

Unfortunately, the ranks of financial winners include few graduates of community colleges, and as a result big gifts to such institutions are rare. When LaGuardia Community College in New York City received a $2 million donation from Goldman Sachs in 2015, it doubled the school's endowment. The gift was unusual enough to make the New York Times. By comparison, Harvard raised an average of $3.1 million a day during 2015.

There's something heroic about wealthy crusaders who aim to spend down their fortunes to improve society—that is, assuming you like what they're doing. If you don't, that sense of urgency can be unnerving. How many liberals, for example, would be thrilled if the Koch brothers announced that they intended to give away their vast fortune as quickly as possible to make "America a better place"?

Unlike water, which prefers to lie flat as it accumulates, material wealth in complex societies likes to pile itself up into huge pyramids.

Jeffrey discovered that the truth was the opposite of what he'd always believed. He'd always tried to keep his weaknesses and vulnerabilities hidden because he thought they were so shameful. But in spite of all his wealth, power, and success, Jeffrey had never really gotten close to people or discovered any inner peace or happiness. In contrast, his human, vulnerable

The marketplace is not a battlefield where the person with the most money wins the battle and takes the whole prize;

Property is a central economic institution of any society, and private property is the central institution of a free society.

Table 4.1 Equities Generate Superior Returns in the Long Run Wealth Multiples for U.S. Asset Classes and Inflation December 1925–December 2005 Asset Class Multiple Inflation 11 times Treasury bills 18 times Treasury bonds 71 times Corporate bonds 100 times Large-capitalization stocks 2,658 times Small-capitalization stocks 13,706 times Source: Ibbotson Associates, Stocks, Bonds, Bills and Inflation, 2006 Year Book.

Law school was, for the most part, full of overindulged kids looking to become lawyers either to please daddy or to bring home the big paycheck.

Progressive liberals seem incapable of stating the obvious truth: that we who are well off should be willing to share more of what we have with poor people not for the poor people's sake but for our own; i.e., we should share what we have in order to become less narrow and frightened and lonely and self-centered people.

having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear.

that Joelle even now lives hand-to-lung on a grossly generous trust willed her by a man she unveiled for but never slept with, the prodigious punter's father, infinite jester, director of a final opus so magnum he'd claimed to have had it locked away.

Of course it's true that an unprecedented number of young Americans have big disposable incomes, fine tastes, nice things, competent accountants, access to exotic intoxicants, attractive sex partners, and are still deeply unhappy.

Nothing matters in this goddamned lunatic asylum of a world but dough.

Any place is grand, long as you got the old do-re-mi in the grouch bag

Money has only a different value in the eyes of each.

What a charming reconciler and peacemaker money is!

but think how mysterious and often unaccountable it is--that lottery of life which gives to this man the purple and fine linen, and sends to the other rags for garments and dogs for comforters.

So there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness perchance, behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt House with its smoky coronets and ciphers. The feasts there were of the grandest in London, but there was not overmuch content therewith, except among the guests who sat at my lord's table. Had he not been so great a Prince very few possibly would have visited him; but in Vanity Fair the sins of very great personages are looked at indulgently.

Thriftless gives, not from a beneficent pleasure in giving, but from a lazy delight in spending.

William Makepeace Thackeray

When a rich man is hurt his wail goeth heavens high and none may say he heareth not.

Simplement parce les grandes oeuvres d'art, celles qui envahissent toute la vie, doivent résulter de la coopération harmonieuse entre voisins. Or, un homme riche n'a pas de voisins, mais des rivaux et des parasites.