A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.

You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

I’m very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.

The ‚Maddox Jolie-Pitt‘ Foundation’s work is inspired by our children and their connections to particular countries.

The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty.

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

This 90/10 rule holds true in almost anything financial. Take the game of golf, for example. Ten percent of the professional golfers make 90 percent of the money.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

I just think that – when a country needs more income and we do, we’re only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that – that – when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

Generous people can become more generous as they become richer, giving away vast fortunes to worthwhile causes as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are doing.

The baby boomers are getting older, and will stay older for longer. And they will run right into the dementia firing range. How will a society cope? Especially a society that can’t so readily rely on those stable family relationships that traditionally provided the backbone of care?

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there’s no doubt that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics.

Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it’s no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create – in one generation – closing the gap. That’s why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: ‚cause it’s life or death for real.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

Philanthropy should be voluntary.

I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.

Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

I believe that of all the things I have done, exciting though many of them have been, there’s no doubt in my mind that the most worthwhile have been the establishing of schools and hospitals, and the rebuilding of monasteries in the mountains.

I think when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.

Charity bestowed upon those who are worthy of it is like good seed sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions are like seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of the alms choke, as it were, the growth of merits.

I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

Now, anybody who thinks that we can move this economy forward with just a few folks at the top doing well, hoping that it’s going to trickle down to working people who are running faster and faster just to keep up, you’ll never see it.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

We can’t leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world’s people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.

The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

Once you’ve grown to accept something and it becomes part of the system you’ve inherited, you don’t even notice it any longer.

In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That’s quite clear.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

A little over 5% of the world’s population produces almost 29% of the world’s goods and services.

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

I don’t think anybody would argue now that the Internet isn’t becoming a major factor in our lives. However, it’s very new to us. Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‚over the Internet.‘