Sunday, June 29, 2008 – Hard Times
Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought to have – and that is a moral problem, not an economic one. ~ Paul Heyne
Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests. ~ C. Wright Mills
The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world’s population. ~ Bill Bryson
All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy, avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth. ~ Karl Marx
Today we have a temporary aberration called “industrial capitalism” which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital… the natural world and properly functioning societies. No sensible capitalist would do that. ~ Amory Lovins
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists. ~ Ernest Hemingway
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. ~ Laurence J. Peter
Ask five economists and you’ll get five different answers (six if one went to Harvard). ~ Edgar R. Fiedler
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters. ~ Jean-Paul Kauffmann
The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. ~ Mad Magazine
If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments. ~ Earl Wilson
Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits. ~ Edmund Burke
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. ~ Oscar Wilde
Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping. ~ Bo Derek
If you want to see what God thinks of money, just look at all the people He gave it to. ~ Dorothy Parker
A woman’s mink coat represents the sacrifice of a lot of little animals, including her husband. ~ Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966
The rich are the scum of the earth in every country. ~ G. K. Chesterton, Flying Inn (1914)
I don’t like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves. ~ Joe Louis
Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be. ~ Rita Rudner
I’m not a paranoid deranged millionaire. Goddamit, I’m a billionaire. ~ Howard Hughes
Life shouldn’t be printed on dollar bills. ~ Clifford Odets
I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money. ~ Pablo Picasso
It’s a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. ~ Albert Camus
If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves there wouldn’t be enough to go around. ~ Christina Stead
God is on everyone’s side … and, in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies. ~ Jean Anouilh
Money doesn’t talk, it swears. ~ Bob Dylan, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy. ~ Groucho Marx
Part of the ten million I spent on gambling, part on booze and part on women. The rest I spent foolishly. ~ George Raft
I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something. ~ Jackie Mason
Money can’t buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy. ~ Spike Milligan
I cannot afford to waste my time making money. ~ Louis Agassiz
When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary. ~ Will O’Brien
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. ~ Woody Allen
Money is something you have to make in case you don’t die. ~ Max Asnas
No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather. ~ Michael Pritchard
Just Above Sunset 