The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.
—Charles Kuralt
John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. This helps explain why American culture is so hostile to the idea of limits, why voters during the last energy shortage rejected the sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter and elected Ronald Reagan who told them it was still "morning in America." Nowhere does the myth of progress have more fervent believers.
—Ronald Wright
I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me.
—Sara Teasdale
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
—George Bernard Shaw
Don't you know that if people could bottle the air they would? Don't you know there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath if they could not pay for air?
—Robert Ingersoll
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships
—W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know he is.
—Jean Anouilh
Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
—Mother Teresa
When you go to work, if your name is on the building, you’re rich. If your name is on your desk, you’re middle-class. If your name is on your shirt, you’re poor.
—Rich Hall
The rich are never threatened by the poor—they do not notice them.
—Marie de France
During the contest for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination, John F. Kennedy visited a mine in West Virginia. “Is it true you’re the son of one of our wealthiest men?” asked one of the miners there. Kennedy admitted that this was true. “Is it true that you’ve never wanted for anything and had everything you wanted?” “I guess so,” Kennedy replied. “Is it true you’ve never done a day’s work with your hands all your life?” Kennedy nodded. “Well, let me tell you this,” said the miner. “You haven’t missed a thing.”
—Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes
What greater folly can be imagined than to call gems, silver, and gold “noble” and earth and dirt “base”? For do not these persons consider that, if there were as great a scarcity of earth as there is of jewels and precious metals, there would be no king who would not gladly give a heap of diamonds and rubies and many ingots of gold to purchase only so much earth as would suffice to plant a jessamine in a little pot or to set a tangerine in it, that he might see it sprout, grow up, and bring forth such goodly leaves, fragrant flowers, and delicate fruit?
—Galileo Galilei
The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.
—Charles Kuralt
A certain kind of rich man afflicted with the symptoms of moral dandyism sooner or later comes to the conclusion that it isn't enough merely to make money. He feels obliged to hold views, to espouse causes and elect Presidents, to explain to a trembling world how and why the world went wrong. The spectacle is nearly always comic.
—Lewis H. Lapham
The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.
—J. Paul Getty