Quotes About Wealth

If the continuing problems created by the Industrial Age were not addressed, he warned, the country would eventually be "sundered by those dreadful lines of division" that set "the haves" and the "have-nots" against one another.

Wilson argued that "the wealth of America" lay in its small businesses, its towns and villages. "Its vitality does not lie in New York, nor in Chicago," he asserted; "it will not be sapped by anything that happens in St. Louis. The vitality of America lies in the brains, the energies, the enterprise of the people throughout the land; in the efficiency of their factories and in the richness of the fields that stretch beyond the borders of the town.

Now I believe in rich people who act squarely, and in labor unions which are managed with wisdom and justice; but when either employee or employer, laboring man or capitalist, goes wrong, I have to clinch him, and that is all there is to it.

He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.

Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty," Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote in Wealth Against Commonwealth, an influential 1902 indictment of the trusts. "The flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are grown greater than the State . . . and that the naked issue of our time is with property becoming master, instead of servant.

The majority of the great fortunes were "won not by doing evil, but as an incident to action which has benefited the community as a whole.

Privilege can stunt ambition, just as the lack of privilege can fire ambition.

I'm giving my whole life to breaking the butterfly of a John Rockefeller upon the wheel of my ponderous articles

An indifferent student at Groton, Harvard College, and Columbia Law, Franklin ostensibly was following an expected path for a member of the privileged class by joining an old, conservative Wall Street law firm.

For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not.

You must admit he radiates an atmosphere of the suburbs. Odd. But they all do—I mean those tycoons, they all did. One could positively see the labour-saving devices and the kiddies all in their slumber-wear, coming down to kiss daddy good night. Bloody complacent swine they all are.

Ben, but Teresa too, must be feeling oppressed by the rich clever world where people could leap off into air under umbrellas and feel safe, because their lives had always been safe.

My dear Gaultier,' said Lymond. 'It will send the Shadow of God into transports. I suppose I've seen objects more grisly before, but it doesn't spring to mind where.… Twenty-four-carat gold, Jerott. Look. And studded with rubies like fish-roes.' 'Yes. I think he'll be pleased,' said Georges Gaultier. For the first time satisfaction, animation and even cheerfulness rang in his voice. 'Sickening, isn't it?

Good evening, ladies. The gentlemen now entering behind you are all fully armed. I am Francis Crawford of Lymond and I want your lives or your jewels -- the latter for preference; both if necessary.

They play at gods,' said Piedar Dooly, and spat. 'French and English alike. Gods out of hell would you say, harrowing green land for their tennis courts and dressing lapdogs in treasure that would keep half Ireland in bread for a year. The heroes of Tara would have put them face to schisty face and used them for millstones.

We?' said Chancellor. 'I am lavishly paid,' Danny said, 'to think in the first person plural.

You will have power and wealth, but what are these to a scholar? You will end your life an oasis in a desert of ignorance.

And, long since ashore with his men and his booty, Crawford of Lymond, man of wit and crooked felicities, bred to luxury and heir to a fortune, rode off serenely to Midculter to break into his new sister-in-law's castle.

This man Jerott,' said Danny Hislop accusingly. 'You said he was middle-aged.' Jerott turned. 'I didn't,' said Adam Blacklock indignantly. 'I said he was stinking rich and cut his old allies dead in the street. I did not say he was middle-aged.

Lord Culter watched them come. There was about him none of the mad abandon of the bridegroom. A sober, thickset figure with brown hair and reliable grey eyes, Richard Crawford in his thirties was a man of wealth and tried power. He waited, his face stony, and before Buccleuch opened his mouth, he spoke. "If it's about Lymond, don't trouble, Buccleuch." "It's about Lymond," said Sir Wat grimly, and let fly.

I'm going back to Russia. That's where the money is, and the power. And, of course, the ladies.

Si los deseos fueran pasteles —dijo Lymond, lanzando al aire un objeto brillante—, los mendigos darían mordiscos.

The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth.

She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing and enamored, but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of inferiority which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realized that there was, after all, something godlike about him. He could control a horse.