Quotes About Affluence

Whether… civilization has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man is a question that may be strongly contested," he wrote in 1795. "[Both] the most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.

I know what coming back to America from a war zone is like because I've done it so many times. First there is a kind of shock at the level of comfort and affluence that we enjoy, but that is followed by the dismal realization that we live in a society that is basically at war with itself. People speak with incredible contempt about—depending on their views—the rich, the poor, the educated, the foreign-born, the president, or the entire US government.

Whether… civilization has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man is a question that may be strongly contested," he wrote in 1795. "[Both] the most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized." When

why Western society is so unappealing. On a material level it is clearly more comfortable and protected from the hardships of the natural world. But as societies become more affluent they tend to require more, rather than less, time and commitment by the individual, and it's possible that many people feel that affluence and safety simply aren't a good trade for freedom

As affluence and urbanization rise in a society, rates of depression and suicide tend to go up rather than down. Rather than buffering people from clinical depression, increased wealth in a society seems to foster

The mechanism seems simple: poor people are forced to share their time and resources more than wealthy people are, and as a result they live in closer communities. Inter-reliant poverty comes with its own stresses—and certainly isn't the American ideal—but it's much closer to our evolutionary heritage than affluence.

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

The rich are different from you and me because they have more credit.

The atmosphere of money enfolded Peese like cling film when he entered Jane's apartment. It coated his skin, thick and silken; it slid down his throat like buttermilk. It intimidated. It was meant to.

Well, let me tell you something, darling: money, elite social status and the power they confer are every bit as wonderful as they're cracked up to be.

The possibility that popular participation and growing material affluence might serve as a barrier to the growth of the totalitarian state never occurred to Burckhardt. Instead, he concluded, "I know too much history to expect anything from the despotism of the masses except tyranny, which will be the end of history.

I am more rich in goods than I am in money.

I'll be blunt: Money's gotten buggy.

I just think it's great to show a gown that's $8,000 and a shoe that's, like, $25 - but still look fabulous together.

The evidence shows that grammar schools overwhelmingly benefit those from more affluent backgrounds.

I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The next eleven floors held a single apartment per floor and belonged to the principals of hedge funds and private equity firms and one Argentine model and her soccer player boyfriend who spent no more than a week out of the year in New York.

He was a rich man—richer, I think, than Mr. Macafee—and like most rich men he had nothing distinctive about him, the money having assumed for him the task of self-expression that, in poorer men, is assumed by the personality;

Morals are a luxury of the rich.

We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.

Poor villager comes and throws a plastic bag; that's not the main issue now. The issue is with the affluent, isn't it?

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

But it is pretty to see what money will do.

For love must be a very foolish thing to look back upon, when it has brought persons born to affluence into indigence, and laid a generous mind under obligation and dependence.