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.

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.‘

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

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

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

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 quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

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.

Philanthropy should be voluntary.

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

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

I like to give back.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

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

There is nothing I fear more than waking up without a program that will help me bring a little happiness to those with no resources, those who are poor, illiterate, and ridden with terminal disease.

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.

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.

The first time I ever saw snow skis was when I was 62 years old and that was 19 years ago and I’m still skiing. So, we’ll be skiing with some very close friends of the Carter Center letting them know what the Carter Center is doing around the world. We have programs in over 65 countries.

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.

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

Giving should be entered into in just the same way as investing. Giving is investing.

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

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

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

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.

My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories – not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father’s generation. It’s a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

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

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.

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.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

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 want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

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

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.

It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow… that are the aftermath of war.

The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else.

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.