Quotes About Wealth

Affluence isn't affluence at all. Hong Kong is the benchmark; everybody else's affluence is mere tat. Until you've experienced that perfume-washed air as polarized glass doors embrace you into a luxury hotel's plush interior, you've only had a dud replica of the real thing.

People would be happier, and in the long run wealthier, if they bought basic, functional appliances, automobiles, and wristwatches, and invested the money they saved for future consumption; yet, Americans in particular spend almost everything they have—and sometimes more—on goods for present consumption, often paying a large premium for designer names and superfluous features.

Rich and famous and doing good," mused Schlichtmann. "Rich isn't so difficult. Famous isn't so difficult. Rich and famous together aren't so difficult. Rich, famous, and doing good--now, that's very difficult.

Who is rich?' the rabbis ask. And they answer: he who is satisfied with his portion.

Then, the stunningly white cubes that make up the Getty Museum. It's an architectural masterpiece funded by a venal billionaire's trust, housing third-rate art. Pure L.A.: might makes right and packaging is all. Traffic

The inequalities are greater now than in '92. Some states have equalized per-pupil spending but they set the 'equal level' very low, so that wealthy districts simply raise extra money privately.

Research experts want to know what can be done about the values of poor segregated children; and this is a question that needs asking. But they do not ask what can be done about the values of the people who have segregated these communities. There is no academic study of the pathological detachment of the very rich...

Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school—and to the public school in our district. Thus the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively requires inequality. Compulsory inequity, perpetuated by state law, too frequently condemns our children to unequal lives.

The rich leapt over suspicious puddles in their beautiful clothes. Up and down they strolled, no discernible destination in mind, and that, he [Andrew Haswell Green] decided, must be a thing that money can buy: the freedom from needing direction.

But there never was a country, no matter how noble or well-intentioned, that wasn't infected by a greedy and power-hungry few.

Your Gain Is My Pain: Negative Psychological Externalities of Cash Transfers.

a middle-class teacher or a working-class taxi driver in San Francisco, and if every morning you watch as millionaires who look like teenagers queue on Van Ness Avenue for the Google bus, the status gap probably feels even bigger than the income gap.

we care about money not so much because of what it buys as because of where it ranks us among our peers.

Money is applause.

I was not comparing my forty-year-old self to my twenty-year-old self, as the twenty-year-old version of me had assumed I would. I was comparing myself to other fortysomethings in my peer group, many of whom also had sustained relationships (often longer), accumulated wealth (often more), and achieved professional status (often higher). True, I was better off than most of humanity, but most of humanity was not my comparison group.

Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires

richer people were happier than poorer people, but getting richer didn't make a country happier.

In our comfort, we have forgotten that virtue is hard. In our wealth, we have forgotten that freedom is expensive.

One of the most profound contributions Torah made to the civilisation of the West is this: that the destiny of nations lies not in the externalities of wealth or power, fate or circumstance, but in moral responsibility: the responsibility for creating and sustaining a society that honours the image of God within each of its citizens, rich and poor, powerful or powerless alike.

The concept of equality we find in the Torah specifically and Judaism generally is not an equality of wealth: Judaism is not communism. Nor is it an equality of power: Judaism is not anarchy. It is fundamentally an equality of dignity. We are all equal citizens in the nation whose sovereign is God.

He sat back, dropped heavily into his gold Platner chair.

It appears that no one is so unfortunate that he or she is exempt from spending cuts, while at the same time no one is so fortunate as to be ineligible for a tax cut

This was what she liked — a clear, straightforward objective, a simple danger to be faced down. But more than that, she had a sense that things were going her way. She had a bulging sack of banknotes, a head start on her enemies, a gun in hand, and the wilderness up ahead. Life was good again, and the sun was shining too.

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.