Quotes About Wealth

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it is not composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.

Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any discussion: you are rich and I am poor.

to be a government of liberty regulated by law, with such results in the development of strength, in population, wealth, and military and commercial power, as no age had ever witnessed.

In America] wealth circulates inconceivable rapidity, and experience shows that it is rare to find two succeeding generations in the full enjoyment of it.

The arrogance of wealth and the dejection of wretchedness, capital cities of unwonted extent, a lax morality, a vulgar egotism, and a great confusion of interests, are the dangers which almost invariably arise from the magnitude of States.

When the question is reduced to the simple expression of the struggle between poverty and wealth, the tendency of each side of the dispute becomes perfectly evident without further controversy.

The passion for physical comforts is essentially a passion of the middle classes: with those classes it grows and spreads, with them it preponderates.

Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage. The laws of an aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the minority, because an aristocracy, by its very nature, constitutes a minority.

The love of wealth is . . . to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do...

Plus une société est riche, industrieuse, prospère, plus les jouissances du plus grand nombre deviennent variées et permanentes; plus elles sont variées et permanentes, plus elles s'assimilent par l'usage et l'exemple à de véritables besoins. L'homme civilisé est donc infiniment plus exposé aux vicissitudes de la destinée que l'homme sauvage.

When hereditary wealth, the privileges of rank, and the prerogatives of birth have ceased to be, and when every man derives his strength from himself alone, it becomes evident that the chief cause of disparity between the fortunes of men is the mind.

Whatever one does, it is impossible to raise the intelligence of a nation above a certain level. It will be quite useless to ease the access to human knowledge, improve teaching methods, or reduce the cost of education, for men will never become educated nor develop their intelligence without devoting time to the matter... Thus it is as difficult to imagine a society where all men are enlightened as a state where all the citizens are wealthy.

The prestige that attached to old things having disappeared, birth, condition, and profession no longer distinguish men or hardly distinguish them; there remains scarcely anything but money that creates very visible differences between them and that can set off some from their peers. The distinction that arises from wealth is increased by the disappearance and diminution of all the others.

Exceptional physical conditions, private interest, religion, in that it puts a brake on the inordinate taste for material wealth—these are, from the first weeks of the American journey, the three elements that profoundly marked Tocqueville's arguments.

The wealthy members of the community [in America] entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic institutions of their country. The populace is at once the object of their scorn and of their fears.

The desire to grow rich at all costs, the taste for business, the passion for gain, the pursuit of comfort and material enjoyment are thus the most common preoccupations in despotisms.

The passion for physical comforts is essentially a passion of the middle classes.

They had not been obliged by necessity to leave their country; the social position they abandoned was one to be regretted, and their means of subsistence were certain. Nor did they cross the Atlantic to improve their situation or to increase their wealth; the call which summoned them from the comforts of their homes was purely intellectual; and in facing the inevitable sufferings of exile their object was the triumph of an idea. The

They would thus ruin themselves without warming the hearts of the population that surrounds them. It does not ask of them the sacrifice of their money, but of their haughtiness.

Alt?n bir çaÄŸ yaÅŸan?yordu; benzersiz maceralar, zengin yaÅŸam ve zor ölüm devriydi bu . . . ama kimse öyle düÅŸünmüyordu. Servet ve h?rs?zl?kla, yaÄŸma ve çapulculukla, kültür ve ahlaks?zl?kla dolu bir gelecekti bu . . . ama kimse bunu kabul etmiyordu. A??r?l?klar?n ça??yd?, hilkat garibelerinin büyüleyici yüzy?l? . . . ama kimse bundan hoÅŸlanm?yordu.

They were of the female persuasion and richly endowed with vice.

The rich can get whatever they want put into the papers.

A million dollars in those days was a million dollars.