There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

Civilization is the making of civil persons.

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.

These days there is a lot of poverty in the world, and that’s a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone. We all have to think about how we can become a little poorer.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don’t buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.

He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

We live in an imperfect world, and imperfect people surround us every day.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

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

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

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.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.

More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million of them live in the Third World.

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

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

I have this feeling that the world is not in balance. And people are afraid, but we’re also starting to be really brave.

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

Of course, I do everything for money.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

In many ways, when you’re a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.

There’s nothing – I’ve bought everything I want. I don’t like yachts or anything; you know, I’m not a yacht person, and I’ve got pretty much the nicest plane I’d want to have.

If I hadn’t given my money away, I’d have had more than anyone else on the planet.

I live in a crazy time.

Think and grow rich.

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

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

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.