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Money

Money is commonly defined by the functions attached to any good or token that functions in trade as a medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account, although economics offers various definitions.

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  • Throw money at a problem and it will remain.
    • Tony Kakko (Sonata Arctica), Abandoned, Pleased, Brainwashed, Exploited
  • Ploratur lacrimis amissa pecunia veris.
  • Lost money is wept for with real tears.
    • Juvenal, Satires 13, v. 134

  • Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit,
    Et minus hanc optat, qu non habet.
  • Translation: Increase of wealth increases our desires
    And hew, who least possesses, least requires.
  • Alt. Translation: The love of money grows as the money itself grows.
    • Juvenal, Satires 14, v. 139

  • If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it.
    • Epictetus, "The Encheiridion, or Manual, XXIV" (c. 135 A.D.), as translated by George Long, The Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion and Fragments (1890), p. 388

  • Quid faciant leges, ubi sola pecunia regnat?
  • What power has law where only money rules?
    • Petronius, Satyricon, Cap. XIV
  • That's just a lie we tell poor people to keep them from rioting in the streets.
    • Eva Longoria Parker, Desperate Housewives In response to the claim that money can't buy happiness.

  • Money, now this has to be some good shit.
    • Martin Amis, Money, a Suicide Note (1984)

  • Everybody loves money. That's why it's called "money".
    • Danny Devito, Heist (2001)

  • For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
    • 1 Timothy 6:10 KJV (The King James Bible)
    • Latin translation is Radix malorum est cupiditas.

  • No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
    • Jesus, Luke 16:13 and Matthew 6:24 (Bible).

  • I think it a greater theft to Rob the dead of their Praise, then the Living of their Money.
    • Edward Ravenscroft, Preface to Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia (1686); quoted in The Shakespeare Allusion-Book: A Collection of Allusions to Shakespeare from 1591-1700, vol 2, ed. John Munro (1932)

  • But as they all say if we sell our home what will we have for it, money, and what is the use of that money, money goes and after it is gone then where are we, beside we have all we want, what can we do with money except lose it, money to spend is not very welcome, if you have it and you try to spend it, well spending money is an anxiety, saving money is a comfort and a pleasure, economy is not a duty it is a comfort, avarice is an excitement, but spending money is nothing, money spent is money non-existent, money saved is money realised...
    • Stein, Gertrude. Paris France (1940). New York: Liveright (1970) pg. 103

  • It's no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money.
    • Everett Sloane, Citizen Kane; screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles

  • Keith (Eric Stoltz): You can't tell a book by its cover.
    Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson): No, but you can tell how much it's gonna cost you.
    • Some Kind of Wonderful, on going out with rich-girl Amanda (Lea Thompson).

  • Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
    • Aaron McGruder (American cartoonist and comic strip artist), taken from The Boondocks, 7-10-2001

  • I look at Paris Hilton, think about her parents' fortune and her grandparents' fortune. She thought she had it all together. A whole lot of people think that, that when you got money you can do anything you want to do. But I want to tell you there are some things money can't do for you; Money can buy you a house, but can't buy you a home; Money can buy you food to put on your table, but can't buy an appetite; Money can buy you one of the most finest matresses in the world, but can't buy you sleep.
    • Archbishop LeRoy Bailey Jr., Senior Pastor The First Cathedral From a sermon entitled: We Need GODDelivered: June 14th,2007 at The First Cathedral.

  • It's all about money cause without money you dead/ Ain't a damn thing funny / You gotta have a con in this land of milk and honey
    • Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, "The Message" (1982)

  • Money couldn't buy friends, but you got a better class of enemy.
    • Spike Milligan, Mrs. Doonan, in Puckoon (1963), Ch. 6

  • Money is the source of the greatest vice, and that nation which is most rich, is most wicked.
    • Frances Burney (1752–1840), British diarist. The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, journal entry for 17th November 1768

  • It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
    • Albert Camus, Notebooks (1963), p. 77

  • Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.
    • Agatha Christie, Endless Night (1967)

  • Sex is like money; only too much is enough.
    • John Updike, Couples (1968), p. 437

  • That wretched alchemist called money can turn a man’s heart into a stone!
    • Mehmet ildan, Beggar's Prophecy (2001), p. 43

  • Money isn't everything but neither is it nothing.
    • Leonid S. Sukhorukov, All About Everything (2005)

  • Money / It's a crime / Share it fairly / But don't take a slice of my pie. / Money / So they say / Is the root of all evil today.
    • Pink Floyd, "Money", The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

  • Your lovin' gives me a thrill/But your lovin' don't pay my bills/I need money
    • Money (That's What I Want) Various artists

  • The grabbing hands / Grab all they can / All for themselves, after all / It's a competitive world / Everything counts in large amounts
    • Depeche Mode; from the song, Everything Counts (1983)

  • No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

  • Divitiæ bona ancilla, pessima domina.
  • Translations:
    Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.
    Wealth is a good servant, a very bad mistress
    L'argent est un bon serviteur, et un méchant maître
    Money is a good servant, a dangerous master.
    • Francis Bacon, De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), Book Six
    • The last two have sometimes been attributed to Dominique Bouhours, but are probably just translations of Bacon's words.

  • Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.
    • Francis Bacon, ‘Of seditions and Troubles’, Essays, 15,

  • ’Tis money that begets money.
    • Thomas Fuller, Proverb in, Gnomologia (1732)

  • Penny saved is a penny got.
    • Henry Fielding, The Miser (1733), Act 3, Sc. 12

  • Si possis recte, si non, quocumque mondo rem.
    By right means, if you can, but by any means make money.
    • Horace, Epistles, I, i

  • Money never made any man rich. Contrariwise, there is not any man that hath gathered store of it together that is not become more covetous.
    • Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales

  • Pecunia non olet
    • Translation: Money does not smell.
      (His response on being reproached by his son on taking money as a tax on urine, collected from public urinals in Rome.) Originally from Suetonius, Vespasian
    • Vespasian

  • A man will be generally very old and feeble before he forgets how much money he has in the funds.
    • Anthony Trollope, Autobiography of Anthony Trollope (1883), Chapter IX, p. 141

  • It may interest some if I state that during the last twenty years I have made by literature something near £70,000. As I have said before in these pages, I look upon the result as comfortable, but not splendid.
    • Anthony Trollope, Autobiography of Anthony Trollope (1883), Chapter XX, p. 327

  • Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.
    • Leo Tolstoy, What shall We Do Then? (1886)

  • We could never imagine what a strange disproportion a few or a great many pieces of money make between men, if we did not see it every day with our own eyes.
    • Jean de la Bruyère, Characters

  • Money. Cause of all evil, Auri sacra fames. The god of the day—but not to be confused with Apollo. Politicians call it emoluments; lawyers, retainers; doctors, fees; employees, salary; workmen, pay; servants, wages. “Money is not happiness.”
    • Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Received Ideas, c.1850-80

  • The earning of money should be a means to an end; for more than thirty years—I began to support myself at sixteen—I had to regard it as the end itself.
    • George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903)

  • Money, which represents the prose of life, and is hardly spoken of in parlors without apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nominalist and Realist", Essays: second series (1844), p. 252

  • What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the bankers! How tenderly we look at her faults if she is a relative; what a kind, good-natured old creature we find her!
    • William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1847), Chapter 9

  • Money often costs too much.
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life (1860), Chapter III, "Wealth"

  • Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the rest;
    Oh, the brave Music of a distant Drum!
    • Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, 1st edn., 1859

  • Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his money,—he never knows. He doesn’t make it to do anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it.
    • John Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olives, 1886

  • So pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho!
    So pleasant it is to have money.
    • Arthur Hugh Clough (1811-1861), Dipsychus, Part I. Sc. ii

  • Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
    • Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778), ‘Avarice’, Philosophical Dictionary (1764)

  • It is more easy to write on money than to obtain it; and those who gain it, jest much at those who only know how to write about it.
    • Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

  • When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
    • Voltaire. Letter to Mme. D’Épinal Ferney, 26th December 1760

  • Truly, it is not want, but rather abundance, that breeds avarice.
    • Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), French essayist. ‘That the taste of good and evil depends, for a good part, on the idea we have of them’, The Essays, Bk. I, Ch. 14, 1st edition (1580)

  • Therefor my theme is yet, and ever was—
    ‘Radix malorum est cupiditas.’
    Thus can I preche agayn that same vyce
    Which that I use, and that is avaryce.
    • Geoffrey Chaucer, Prologue to ‘The Pardoner's Tale’, Canterbury Tales

  • Would you know what money is, go borrow some.
    • George Herbert, Jackula prudentum (1640)

  • LEAR. No, they cannot touch me for coining; I am the king himself.
    • William Shakespeare, King Lear

  • No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
    • Samuel Johnson, Stated on April 14th 1776, quoted in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

  • The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.
    • Benjamin Franklin, ‘Necessary Hints to Those that would be Rich’ (1736)

  • If you'd lose a troublesome visitor, lend him money.
    • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

  • If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.
    • Benjamin Franklin, "Father Abraham's Speech", Poor Richard's Almanack (1758)

  • Gold and silver are but merchandise, as well as cloth or linen; and that nation that buys the least, and sells the most, must always have the most money.
    • Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773). Letter, ‘Miscellaneous Pieces,’ Letters to his Son, 5th ed. (1774), Vol. IV, p. 332

  • The accuser of sins by my side doth stand,
    And he holds my money bag in his hand;
    For my worldly things God makes him pay;
    And he’d pay for more, if to him I would pray.
    • William Blake, As quoted in Alexander Gilchrist’s ‘Life of William Blake’, ‘Pictor Ignotus’, 1863

  • Money well managed deserves, indeed, the apotheosis to which she was raised by her Latin adorers; she is Diva Moneta — a goddess.
    • Edward Bulwer-Lytton, ‘On the Management of Money’, Caxtoniana, 1864

  • Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it: "Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith."
    • David Alfred Doudney "Old Jonathan's" jottings; or, Light and lessons from daily life (1869), p. 18; published earlier in the magazine Old Jonathan, or the Parish Helper
    • Often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin

  • 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.
    • Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.), Roman orator. De Senectute, Ch. 6, Sc. 20

  • Endless money forms the sinews of war
    • Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC–43 BC), Philippics, Oration V, sc. 5

  • Money never made any man rich. Contrariwise, there is not any man that hath gathered store of it together that is not become more covetous.
    • Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, letter 119

  • And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, – what will compare with it?
    • Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)

  • Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money.
    • Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)

  • In reality money, like numbers and law, is a category of thought. There is a monetary, just as there is a juristic and a mathematical and a technical, thinking of the world-around.
    • Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West; German edition: Der Untergang des Abenlandes, (1918-22)

  • The usual definition of the functions of money are that money is a medium of exchange, a measure of value, a standard of deferred payment and a store of value.
    • Sir Norman Angell (1872-1967), The Story of Money (1930)

  • Public opinion always wants easy money, that is, low interest rates.
    • Ludwig von Mises, A Critique of Interventionism, (1929) p. 163

  • Meanwhile Hollywood has gone nuts. Carol [his wife] turned down a writing job for me at five thousand a week. She said, “Why Jesus Christ then I’d have to find a new bank every week.” Just what in hell could a writing man do that would be worth five thousand a week. The whole place is nuts...
    • John Steinbeck, Letter (written in California) to the film editor and director, Lloyd Nestor, 17th May 1939

  • I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.
    • John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937), American industrialist. As quoted in Lewis H. Lapham’s Money and Class in America, note to Ch. 8; published in 1988


  • To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be always controlled unless we declare our specific purpose. Or, since when we declare our specific purpose we shall also have to get it approved, we should really be controlled in everything.
    • Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944), Chapter 7, "Economic Control and Totalitarianism"

  • A dollar is something that you multiply – something that causes an expansion of your house and your mechanical equipment, something that accelerates like speed; and that may be also slowed up or deflated. It is a value that may be totally imaginary, yet can for a time provide half-realized dreams.
    • Edmund Wilson, Europe without Baedeker (1947)

  • It is when money looks like manna that we truely delight in it.
    • J. B. Priestly, Delight (1949), p. 134

  • Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
    • Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (1957)

  • To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
    • G. K. Chesterton, ‘The Paradise of Thieves’, The Wisdom of father Brown, 1914

  • As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it.
    • Benjamin Disraeli, Endymion (1881), Chapter LXV.

  • Worldly success, measured by the accumulation of money, is no doubt a very dazzling thing; and all men are naturally more or less the admirers of worldly success.
    • Samuel Smiles (1812-1904), Scottish author and reformer. ‘Money: Its Use and Abuse’, Self-Help (1856), Ch. 10

  • Simple rules for saving money.
    To save half: When you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count to forty.
    To save three-quarters, count sixty.
    To save it all, count sixty-five.
    • Mark Twain, More Tramps Abroad (1897), Chapter 50

  • If all the rich men in the world divided up their money amongst themselves, there wouldn’t be enough to go round.
    • Christina Stead (1902–1983), Australian novelist. House of All Nations, Sc. 12 (written in 1938), published by Angus and Robertson (1988)

  • As a rule, there is nothing that offends us more than a new kind of money.
    • Robert Lynd, The Pleasures of Ignorance (1921), p. 215

  • To borrow money, big money, you have to wear your hair in a certain way, walk in a certain way, and have about you an air of solemnity and majesty — something like the atmosphere of a Gothic cathedral.
    • Stephen Leacock, The Garden of Folly (1924), p. 102

  • With money, so they all profess—
    And I’ve no wish to beg the question—
    One cannot purchase Happiness
    Or Peace of Mind, or yet Success,
    Or a robust digestion;
    But one can buy a good cigar
    And plovers’ eggs and caviare!
    • Harry Graham, ‘The Millionaire’, The World’s Workers (1928)

  • The flour merchant, the house-builder, and the postman charge us no less on account of our sex; but when we endeavour to earn money to pay all these, then, indeed, we find the interest.
    • Lucy Stone (1818–1893), U.S. suffragist. As quoted in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings, part 3, by Miriam Schnier (1972)

  • Cash. I just am not happy when I don't have it. The minute I have it I have to spend it. And I just buy STUPID THINGS.
    • Andy Warhol, From A to B and Back Again (1975)

  • Money is the MOMENT to me.
    Money is my MOOD.
    • Andy Warhol, From A to b and back Again (1975)

  • The best way to keep money in perspective is to have some.
    • Louis Rukeyser, How to Make Money in Wall Street (1976), p. 1.

  • My father told me that when you're working, don't stop to count your money.
    • Pelé, as reported in Pelé: A biography (1976), James Haskins, p. 132

  • If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
    • Aristotle Onassis, quoted in Aristotle Onassis: A Biography (1977), by Nicholas Fraser

  • “I would not steal a penny, for my income’s very fair—
    I do not want a penny—I have pennies and to spare—
    And if I stole a penny from a money-bag or till,
    The sin would be enormous—the temptation being nil.
    • W. S. Gilbert, Fifty ‘Bab’ Ballards, ‘Mister William’ (1876)

  • But for money and the need of it, there would not be half the friendship in the world. It is powerful for good if divinely used. Give it plenty of air, and it is sweet as the hawthorn; shut it up, and it cankers and breeds worms.
    • George MacDonald, Paul Faber, Surgeon (1879), p. 33

  • They may talk of the plugging and sweating
    Of our coinage that’s minted of gold,
    But to me it produces no fretting
    Of its shortness of weight to be told:
    All the sov’reigns I’m able to levy
    As to lightness can never be wrong,
    But must surely be some of the heavy,
    For I never can carry them long.
    • Thomas Hood (1799-1845), ‘Epigram on the Depreciated Money’, Hood’s Own, Second Series (1861)

  • If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.
    • Thomas Edison, The New York Times, December 6, 1921

  • I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. .. We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected.
    • John Danforth, Republican senator from Missouri, reported in the Arizona Republic of April 21, 1992

  • Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.
    • Fidel Castro, Quoted in The Observer (British) newspaper, November 8th 1964

  • Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.
    • Carl Sandburg, The People, Yes, s. 65. (1936)

  • Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history
    • Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto

  • I who can have, through the power of money, everything for which the human heart longs, do I not possess all human abilities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their opposites.
    • Karl Marx, Economical and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)

  • Never allow yourself to get caught without a loose million handy.
    • Lord Nathaniel Rothschild, As quoted as being one of his favourite sayings (on a visit to Cecil Rhodes in South Africa) in the book by Antony Thomas, Rhodes, The Race for Africa (1996)

  • I get a few bruises, but I think of the money and I’m alright.
    • Sir Norman Wisdom (As stated on ‘Pulling Power’, an ITV motoring program c. 2000)

  • I like to carry some cash because you feel like you can cope with any situation – such as being mugged. I always try to have about £50 in my pocket just for convenience, really.
    • David Mitchell, British comic actor. From his interview in with Nick McGarth the Daily Mail, 16th July 2008

  • Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
    • Douglas Adams, Introduction, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

  • A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.
    • Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), "Absurd Creation" (Tr. Justin O'Brien, Vantage International, 1991, ISBN 0-679-73373-6, p. 103)

  • All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.
    • John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 25 August 1787


  • I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.
    • Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 26 Nov 1798


  • And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
    • Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Taylor, 28 May 1816

  • If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil.
    • Recorded in Select Proverbs of All Nations (1824), Thomas Fielding
    • Is sometimes attributed to Henry Fielding, apparently just because he has the same last name.

  • To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst.
    • Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words : Addressed to Those who Think (1836), p. 149

  • It is maintained by some that the bank is a means of executing the constitutional power “to coin money and regulate the value thereof.” Congress have established a mint to coin money and passed laws to regulate the value thereof. The money so coined, with its value so regulated, and such foreign coins as Congress may adopt are the only currency known to the Constitution. But if they have other power to regulate the currency, it was conferred to be exercised by themselves, and not to be transferred to a corporation. If the bank be established for that purpose, with a charter unalterable without its consent, Congress have parted with their power for a term of years, during which the Constitution is a dead letter. It is neither necessary nor proper to transfer its legislative power to such a bank, and therefore unconstitutional.
    • Veto Mesage Regarding the Bank of the United States http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ajveto01.asp (1832-07-10)
    • Often paraphrased as: If Congress has the right under the constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.


  • It would convert the Treasury of the United States into a manufactory of paper money. It makes the House of Representatives and the Senate, or the caucus of the party which happens to be in the majority, the absolute dictator of the financial and business affairs of this country. This scheme surpasses all the centralism and all the Caesarism that were ever charged upon the Republican party in the wildest days of the war or in the events growing out of the war.
    • James A. Garfield, later 20th US President, commenting on a resolution offered by James Weaver of the Greenback Party that the government should issue all money, on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives (1880-04-05), published in
      • A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men ... We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.
        • Woodrow Wilson, 28th US President, The New Freedom (1913), pages 185 and 201.

      • And who can suffer injury by just taxation, impartial laws and the application of the Jeffersonian doctrine of equal rights to all and special privileges to none? Only those whose accumulations are stained with dishonesty and whose immoral methods have given them a distorted view of business, society and government. Accumulating by conscious frauds more money than they can use upon themselves, wisely distribute or safely leave to their children, these denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw a light upon their crimes.
        • William Jennings Bryan, Speech at Madison Square Garden, New York, 30 August 1906, at a reception welcoming Bryan on his return from a year's trip around the world. Speeches of William Jennings Bryan, Funk & Wagnalls, 1909, p. 90
        • Often misquoted as: The money power denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.

      • The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.
        • Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President, letter to Col. Edward Mandell House (21 November 1933); as quoted in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, edited by Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), pg. 373.

      • In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.
        • John Kenneth Galbraith, Money, Whence it Came, Where it Went (1975), p. 90

      • Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.
        • Eric Hoffer, Before the Sabbath (1979), p. 139

      • Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders... The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and... manipulates the credit of the United States.
        • Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), With No Apologies: The Personal and Political Memoirs of United States Senator Barry M. Goldwater (1979)

      • That's right. While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for markets and resources, I claim that in reality they are competing for money - using markets and resources to do so. So designing new money systems really amounts to redesigning the target that orients much human effort.
        Furthermore, I believe that greed and competition are not a result of immutable human temperament; I have come to the conclusion that greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using. For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our national currencies. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive.
        Money is created when banks lend it into existence. When a bank provides you with a $100,000 mortgage, it creates only the principal, which you spend and which then circulates in the economy. The bank expects you to pay back $200,000 over the next 20 years, but it doesn't create the second $100,000 - the interest. Instead, the bank sends you out into the tough world to battle against everybody else to bring back the second $100,000.
        • Bernard Lietaer, economist, one of the designers of the Euro, Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Spring 1997 (pdf)

      • Your money's value is determined by a global casino of unprecedented proportions: $2 trillion are traded per day in foreign exchange markets, 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stockmarkets of the world combined. Only 2% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to the "real" economy reflecting movements of real goods and services in the world, and 98% are purely speculative. This global casino is triggering the foreign exchange crises which shook Mexico in 1994-5, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998. These emergencies are the dislocation symptoms of the old Industrial Age money system.

      • Money is an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange.
        • Bernard Lietaer, The Future of Money (2001)

      • Money…is the symbol of duty, it is the sacrament of having done for mankind that which mankind wanted. Mankind may not be a very good judge, but there is no better.
        • Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English author. Erewhon (1872)

      • If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.
        • Robert Graves (1895-1985), English novelist and poet. ‘Mammon’, Mammon and the Black Goddess (1965)

      • Money is a dangerous subject. Polite conversation avoids it. You may talk about economics, but not raw money…
        • Max Plowman (1883-1941), British writer. ‘Money and The Merchant’, Adelphi magazine, September 1931

      • Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repainting.
        • Billy Rose (1899-1966), American impresario and lyricist. As quoted in the New York Post, 26th October 1957

      • Let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrow money to do it with.
        • Artemus Ward [Charles Farrar Brown] (1834-1867), American humour writer. ‘Science and Natural History’, The London Punch Letters (1865-6)

      • The lifeblood of our economy, indeed the whole world's economy, is based on money. Without a currency that can be trusted, the entire structure of economics, the division of labor itself, falls apart. Our wealth, our well being and our very lives are dependent on the continuation of this highly complex structure called the economy and it in turn is dependent on sound money. We have placed our trust for the management of this money on a gang of thieves called the Federal Reserve. They have now clearly demonstrated their inability to restrain themselves from the excesses that can be perpetrated within a paper money system. If we want to survive as a nation, we need to eliminate both the Federal Reserve and paper money.

      Unsourced

      • A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
        • Jonathan Swift

      • Money is the blood and soul of men and whosoever has none wanders dead among the living.
        • Anonymous Ancient Greek saying.

      • Good news rarely comes in a brown envelope.
        • Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid

      • Is there a number or mark planned for the hand or forehead in a new cashless society? YES, and I have seen the machines that are now ready to put it into operation.
        • Ralph Nader

      • Money is an asset whose value is based on the social trust that it will be exchanged against commodities, services and other assets produced in the future.
        • Meghnad Desai

      • Money is how people set a number to value.
        • David Packouz

      • Money isn't everything, but it sure keeps you in touch with your children.
        • J. Paul Getty

      • The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.
        • Aristotle

      • This Act (the Federal Reserve Act, Dec. 23rd 1913) establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President (Woodrow Wilson) signs the Bill, the invisible government of the Monetary Power will be legalised... The worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency Bill.
        • Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. (1859 – 1924) Congressman (father of the famous aviator)

      • The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the US, if they remained as one block, and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world.
        • Otto von Bismark, Chancellor of Germany 1876

      • Money is evil… and the less we have the more evil it becomes.
        • Leonid S. Sukhorukov

      • To spend money wisely – first spend it on your wisdom.
        • Leonid S. Sukhorukov

      • When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes... Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.
        • Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815

      • When you're rich, the government protects every buck you make and every shit you take.
        • Lewis Black, Accepted

      • He's got a wonderful head for money. There's this long slit on the top.
        • David Frost

      • The great rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.
        • Katharine Whitehorn

      • Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.
        • Bill Vaughan

      • It doesn't matter if you're black or white, the only color that really matters is green.
        • Family Guy

      • By doing good with his money, a man as it were stamps the image of God upon it, and makes it pass current for the merchandise of heaven.
        • John Rutledge

      • The deepest depth of vulgarism is that of setting up money as the ark of the covenant.
        • Thomas Carlyle

      • Money is a poor compensation for all the time we lose making it.
        • James Geary

      • People lose common sense when they gain dollars and cents.
        • James Geary

      • If you are a bee you don't need money for honey.
        • Burcu Uysal

      • If I can acquire money and also keep myself modest and faithful and magnanimous, point out the way, and I will acquire it.
        • Epictetus, The Manuel

      • I'd like to live like a poor man with lots of money.
        • Pablo Picasso

      • Never underestimate the humble penny: it'll buy you a chipati in the Punjab.
        • Swami Raj

      • Money comes and goes; time just goes.
        • Swami Raj

      • Spending money comes in stages, like going broke.
        • Ann Robinson

      • Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
        • Hobart Brown

      • Working for a lot of money can throw your self-image off.
        • Andy Warhol

      • Here we are sitting in a shower of gold, with nothing to hold up but a pitchfork.
        • Christina Stead

      • Money is what you'd get on beautifully without if only other people weren't so crazy about it.
        • Margaret Case Harriman

      • Money—in its absence we are coarse; in its presence we are vulgar.
        • Mignon McLaughlin

      • Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you’ll be surprised at how little you have
        • Ernest Haskins

      • The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.
        • Kin Hubbard

      • If you pay cash th' days won't roll by so fast.
        • Kin Hubbard

      • I don't believe money is no object. Money is the object.
        • James Gulliver

      • The dollar doesn't talk—it screams you green!
        • Anonymous

      • Morals make the man, while money makes morals mighty.
        • Anonymous

      • Money is worthless unless some people have it and others do not.
        • Anonymous

      • Money feels good but is as slippery as sin.
        • Anonymous

      • No dollar is a bastard if it comes to Papa!
        • Anonymous

      • He who has money need have no fear of the law.
        • Old Russian saying

      • Beauty is potent, but money is omnipotent.
        • John Ray

      • When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.
        • Chinese proverb

      • If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to.
        • Irish proverb

      • A penny in the purse is a gude friend.
        • Scottish proverb

      • Money maks the mare to go whether she has legs or no.
        • Scottish proverb

      • Money is like an eel in the hand.
        • Welsh Proverb.

      • With money in your pocket, you are wise, and you are handsome, and you sing well.
        • Yiddish Proverb.

      • Money is a curious thing to those who lack it, as they soon find that if they haven't got it, curiously enough, they can't spend it either.
        • Franklin P. Jones

      • In national affairs a million is a drop in the budget.
        • Burton Roscoe

      • Money has little value to its possessor unless it also has value to others.
        • Leyland Stanford

      • Mammon is the largest slave-holder in the world.
        • Frederick Saunders

      • Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.
        • John Wesley

      Misattributed

      • If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
        • Attributed to Thomas Jefferson, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809). No such document exists. The book Respectfully Quoted says this is "obviously spurious", noting that the OED's earliest citation for the word "deflation" is from 1920. The earliest known appearance of this quote is from 1935 (Testimony of Charles C. Mayer, Hearings Before the Committee on Banking and Currency, House of Representatives, Seventy-fourth Congress, First Session, on H.R. 5357, p. 799)

      • In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial Scrip.' We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods and pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to no one. In this manner, by creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power, and we have no interest to pay, to anyone. You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury.
        • Attributed to Benjamin Franklin Autobiography. These words do not appear in Franklin's Autobiography or any other work of his.

      • History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling the money and its issuance.
        • Attributed to James Madison, 4th US President. This is actually a comment by Olive Cushing Dwinell in her book The Story of Our Money (1946), pp. 71-72.

      • The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best interests.
        • Attributed to Senator John Sherman in a letter supposedly sent from the Rothschild Brothers of London to New York bankers Ikleheimer, Morton, and Vandergould, June 25, 1863. The letters are forgeries that could not have been written before 1876. Further, no evidence of a firm with the name "Ikleheimer, Morton, and Vandergould" has been found.

      • I have two great enemies, the southern army in front of me and the financial institutions, in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy.
        • Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Not found in Lincoln's works. This earliest this quote has been found is 1941.

      • I see in the future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of the war.
        • Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Not found in his works see Abraham Lincoln#Disputed for more information.

      • The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers..... The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of Government, but it is the Government's greatest creative opportunity. By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges. The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matters of practical administration. The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government. Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power.
        • Attributed to Abraham Lincoln. These are not Lincoln's own words, but just Gerry McGeer's interpretation of Lincoln's policy.
          • Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!
            • Attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744 - 1812). No primary source for this is known and the earliest attribution to him known is 1935 (Money Creators, Gertrude M. Coogan). Before that, "Let us control the money of a nation, and we care not who makes its laws" was said to be a "maxim" of the House of Rothschilds, or, even more vaguely, of the "money lenders of the Old World". This is a play on an English proverb, Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.

          • If this mischievous financial policy, which has its origin in North America, shall become indurated down to a fixture, then that Government will furnish its own money without cost. It will pay off debts and be without debt. It will have all the money necessary to carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous without precedent in the history of the world. The brains, and wealth of all countries will go to North America. That country must be destroyed or it will destroy every monarchy on the globe.
            • Attributed to an editorial in the Times of London in 1865. No such editorial ever appeared. The earliest known appearance is September 2, 1898 in The Flaming Sword, Vol. XII, No. 42, p. 7

          • It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system for, if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
          • Variant: If the American people knew the corruption in our money system there would be revolution before morning.
            • Attributed to Henry Ford. The earliest citation found is the article "In the Mercury's Opinion: How Internationalists Gain Power", Russel Maguire, American Mercury, October 1957, p. 79. (Ford died in 1947.) The quote is preceded by "It was Henry Ford, Sr., who said in substance," which may indicate that it is just a paraphrase, not an exact quote.
 
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