Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.

Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities.

It is better to live rich than to die rich.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

True wealth is not of the pocket, but of the heart and of the mind.

Many people aren’t rich because they’re liars.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by four o’clock.

Giving a poor person money keeps them poor.

The reason why I wear gold – I wear gold for three reasons. One, when Jesus was born, three wise men came from the east: one brought frankincense, one brought myrrh, the other one brought gold. The second reason I wear gold is I can afford it. The third reason I wear it, it’s symbolic of my African heritage.

Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called ‚walking.‘

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

I never heard of an old man forgetting where he had buried his money! Old people remember what interests them: the dates fixed for their lawsuits, and the names of their debtors and creditors.

I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

There was a moment when designers draped in ermine would be reading Proust, or pretending to.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

Few people have the imagination for reality.

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

Most poor people live in the poorest countries.

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

I tell myself every day I love my Jacuzzi, I love my marble floors, I love my high ceilings.

The only big things I’ve purchased are my dad’s heart valve and a Rolls-Royce for my parents, for their anniversary. And that was only because my dad had a Lady Gaga license plate on our old car and it was making me crazy because he was getting followed everywhere, so I bought him a new car.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

I find the difference, for me, between having no money and having quite a bit is that the bills get bigger. And that’s it. The lifestyle doesn’t change.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

I’m filthy rich!

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Most people have no idea what something would sound like if it wasn’t an MP3.

May not the complaint, that common people are above their station, often take its rise in the fact of uncommon people being below theirs?

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

I’ve never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a ‚fat cat‘ and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a ‚public-spirited philanthropist‘.

Gold is hoarded. It’s estimated that 95 percent of all gold ever mined is still around.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.