Pithy Sayings

Money

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Banking is not the creator of our prosperity but the creation of it. It is not the cause of our wealth, but it is the consequence of our wealth; and if the industrial energy and development ... were to be hindered or relaxed, then finance and all that finance means, will follow trade to the countries which are more successful than ourselves.
[Joseph Chamberlain, 1904, British politician]

Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.
[From The Power of Money by Karl Marx, 1844]

People in the cheaper seats clap, the rest of you just rattle your jewels.
[John Lennon of The Beatles playing at the Prince of Wales Theatre, London in 1963]

When Bobby got back from Las Vegas, he said he noticed he was pausing just a little bit longer than usual after putting his money into parking meters and Xerox machines.
[From Stories from the Nerve Bible by Laurie Anderson, 1994]

While markets appear to work in practice, we are not sure how they work in theory.
[Professor Maureen O'Hara, financial economist, quoted in The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, 2004]

Buy low and sell high
[Attributed to Jesse Livermore, 1877 to 1940, in Hedgehogging by Barton Biggs, 2006]

I simply cannot help making money. I will tell you my secret if you wish. It is this: I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon.
[Attributed to Baron Rothchild in Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, 1922]

Investing money in the stock market is a gamble. Never gamble with money you cannot afford to lose.
[Martin Leese, 1954 to ?]

In a natural ecology, the more diversity there is, the more flexibility, too, because of what ecologists call its greater numbers of "homeostatic feedback loops," meaning that it includes greater numbers of feedback controls for automatic self-correction. It is the same with our economies.
[From Cities and the Wealth of Nations by Jane Jacobs, 1984]

I'm not so much after the gold part, because I gotta tell you, I've been to many funerals, unfortunately, and every time I go, I look very carefully—nobody's taking anything with them.
[Issac Larian, CEO of MGA Entertainment, quoted in The Real Toy Story by Eric Clark, 2007]

He [Mr. Micawber] solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable.
[From David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, 1850]

People who live within their means tend to be happier and less stressed. That's true not only for the obvious reason — they know their financial futures look bright — but also because they're not consumed with consumption. They're not in the emotionally and financially draining race to acquire the most stuff they possibly can. A race that, it should be noted, has no finish line and thus no winner.
[From The Wealthy Barber Returns by David Chilton, 2011]

[W]hat thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice the problem of riches, ...
[From Poverty as an Industrial Problem by Richard H Tawney, 1913]

The categories that the [Brazilian] government talks about—the rich, the middle class and the poor—don't exist. It's just the rich and the miserable.
[From The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman, 2000]

With all the unrest in the world, I don't think anybody should have a yacht that sleeps more than twelve.
[Tony Curtis, in the film Some Like It Hot, 1959]

We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.
[Attributed to Leona Helmsley during her trial for tax evasion in 1989 by a former housekeeper]

Tax shelters are to democracy what pollution is to the environment.
[David Cay Johnston, 1948 to ?, tax expert]

Financial Advice: You're not rich enough to get richer
[A cartoon by Grizelda (Grizelda Grizlingham) in Private Eye, Number 1364, 18 April 2014, page 33]

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.
[From A Tract on Monetary Reform by John Maynard Keynes, 1923]

The speculative public is incorrigible. In financial terms it cannot count beyond 3. It will buy anything, at any price, if there seems to be some "action" in progress. It will fall for any company identified with "franchising," computers, electronics, science, technology, or what have you [the Internet], when the particular fashion is raging.
[From The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, 1973]

The man knew everything, apparently because he had a lot of money.
[From The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin, 1974]

Stop spending money you don't have to buy things you don't need to impress people who don't matter.
[From "Stop acting rich and start being rich" by Gail Vaz-Oxlade in Calgary Metro, March 28, 2016]

In all of this, the lesson is that a properly functioning market does not seek to advance human happiness but rather to advance human wealth. What speaks in the market is money: purchasing power. If you have no money, you have no voice in the market. The market then acts as if it does not know that you exist and does not care whether you live or die.'
[Brad DeLong, professor of economics, quoted in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalee Newitz, 2013]

Anything that cannot go on forever, will stop.
[Herbert Stein, 1916 to 1999, economist]

Debts that can't be repaid, won't be repaid.
[Michael Hudson, economist, quoted in Debunking Economics by Steve Keen, 2011]