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

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

I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I’m not ashamed of anything.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

The thing about delirium is you think it’s great, but it actually isn’t.

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.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

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

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

If you’re totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

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

As soon as you set foot on a yacht you belong to some man, not to yourself, and you die of boredom.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don’t need to imagine it. It’s called the United States of America.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

I have to be seen to be believed.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

Obama’s primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

We are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much.

A great fortune is a great slavery.

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.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

My family wasn’t rich, so when it comes to money, I tend to think, ‚Err on the side of caution.‘

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

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

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Getting rich is about fun. It’s a game, and you have to treat it that way.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.