“They should own who can administer, not they who hoard and conceal; not they who, the greater proprietors they are, are only the greater beggars, but they whose work carves out work for more, opens a path for all. For he is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give all access to the masterpieces of art and nature is the problem of civilization.”
“Housework, handicrafts, subsistence agriculture, radical technology, learning exchanges, and the like are degraded into activities for the idle, the unproductive, the very poor, or the very rich. A society that fosters intense dependence on commodities thus turns its unemployed into either its poor or its dependents.”
“Another point of economy is to look for seed of the same kind as you sow, and not to hope to buy one kind with an other kind. Friendship buys friendship; justice, justice; military merit, military success...Yet there is commonly a confusion of expectations on these points. Hotspur lives for the moment, praises himself for it, and despises Furlong, that he does not. Hotspur of course is poor, and Furlong is a good provider. The odd circumstance is that Hotspur thinks it a superiority in himself, this improvidence, which ought to be rewarded with Furlong s lands.”
“That law of nature whereby everything climbs to higher platforms, and bodily vigor becomes mental and moral vigor. The bread he eats is first strength and animal spirits; it becomes, in higher laboratories, imagery and thought; and in still higher results, courage and endurance. This is the right compound interest; this is capital doubled, quadrupled, centupled; man raised to his highest power. The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation and not in augmenting animal existence.”
“That which can be lost cannot be deemed riches. Virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. Hold property and external riches with fear; they often leave their possessor scorned and mocked at for having lost them.”
“There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little.”
“Wealth without real worthiness Is no good for the neighbourhood; But their proper mixture Is the summit of beatitude.”
“We cannot measure a person’s value to the human race by tabulating the size of his estate. We must judge each person by his or her final contribution to humanity and nature.”
“I suddenly remember how different I am from most of the kids here. Nobody would have to drag me or my brothers to the Bahamas; we d swim there if we could. For us, a family vacation is staying at a local hotel with a swimming pool for a weekend.”
“Why are you all wasting human labour and the world’s wealth in building machinery to commit mass murder – creatures that for half a million years and more have been endowed with reason – conscious beings who discovered a better way long centuries ago?”
“The ladies in her classes loved to speak to Caridad in broken Spanish, to show her they were comfortable with her ethnicity despite the paleness of their skin and the wealth of their husbands.”
“Siri kubwa ya utajiri kuliko zote duniani ni mawazo yako.”
“Utajiri una changamoto nyingi. Yesu alisema ni rahisi kwa ngamia kupita katika tundu la sindano kuliko tajiri kuingia katika ufalme wa Mungu. Hakusema msomi. Usiwe mwendanguu. Jikusuru kuujua ukweli.”
“Functional societies need algorithms which reward us for being of service to those who need it most. Instead we have algorithms which reward us for being of service to those who need it least”
“Won t reparations divide us? Not any more than we are already divided. The wealth gap merely puts a number on something we feel but cannot say - that American propserity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution. What is needed is an airing of family secrets, a settling with old ghosts. What is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt.”
“the fighting machines that kept the country safe, and, the coffers full.”
“Habits are the determinant of who will be rich or be poor.”