Quotes about money

Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't.

The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent; thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking.

“It’s like prostitution.”

“It’s a lot like prostitution, isn’t it?”

“You see nothing wrong…?”

“The customer’s always right.”

“And you have no,” she shuddered, “ethics?”

“I give the public what it wants, if that’s what you mean.”

“Surely mankind has yet to be born. Surely this is true! For only something blind and uncomprehending could exist in such a mean conjunction with its own flesh, its own kind. How else account for such faltering, clumsy, hateful cruelty? Even the possums and the skunks know better! Even the weasels and the meadow mice have a natural regard for their own blood and kin. Only the insects are low enough to do the low things that people do — like those ants that swarm on poplars in the summertime, greedily husbanding little green aphids for the honeydew they secrete. Yes, it could be that mankind has yet to be born. Ah, what bitter tears God must weep at the sight of the things that men do to other men!” He broke off then and I saw him shake his head convulsively, his voice a sudden cry: “In the name of money! Money! ”

Nevertheless, I still wonder. Each of us, with money, gets further and further away from those moments where the hand pulls the beet root from the soil, shakes the fish from the net into the basket—not to mention the way it separates us from one another, so that when enough money comes between people, they lie apart like parts of a chicken hacked up for stewing.

Love can't flourish in a "society" based on money and meaningless work, but rather requires complete economic, as well as personal, freedom, leisure time and the opportunity to engage in intensely absorbing, emotionally satisfying activities which, when shared with those you respect, lead to deep friendship, but which our "society" provides practically no opportunity to engage in.

"Then one can't make a living out of poetry?"

"Certainly not. What fool expects to? Out of rhyming, yes."

"Let beauty be your end. Why should you mint beauty into gold? Anyway, you can’t."

It is easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments. But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be so secure.

I always thought there was very little wit wanted to make a fortune in the City.

Money is neither god nor devil, that it should make one noble and another vile. It is an accident, and if honestly possessed, may pass from you to me, or from me to you, without a stain.

One of her instructors in fashion had given her to understand that curls were not the thing. "They'll always pass muster," Miss Dunstable had replied, "when they are done up with bank notes."