Sunday, October 1, 2017 – The Filthy Rich
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs. ~ Edmund Burke
No man is rich enough to buy back his past. ~ Oscar Wilde
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. ~ Thomas Jefferson
What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville
Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality. ~ Lord Acton
In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. ~ Confucius
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people … turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government … Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. ~ Alexander Hamilton
He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor. ~ Grover Cleveland
The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last ten years, and I hope the American public is catching on. ~ Warren Buffett
Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor. ~ John Ruskin
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community. ~ Andrew Carnegie, Gospel of Wealth
This is an impressive crowd: the Have’s and Have-More’s. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base. ~ George W. Bush
The only truly new ideas the right has come up with in the last twenty years are (1) supply side economics, which is a way of redistributing the wealth upward toward those who already have more than they know what to do with, and (2) creationism, which is a parallel idea for redistributing ignorance out from its fundamentalist strongholds to those who know more than they need to. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. ~ Gore Vidal
A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office every day. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do. ~ W. H. Auden
Do not waste your time on social questions. What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich. ~ Samuel Johnson
There are people who have money and people who are rich. ~ Coco Chanel
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. ~ Francis Bacon
You can get rich making fun of me. I know. I’ve made lots of money making fun of me. ~ Glenn Beck
I’m rich, freakin’ rich. It’s crazy. ~ Britney Spears
They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody? ~ Princess Diana
These are my new shoes. They’re good shoes. They won’t make you rich like me, they won’t make you rebound like me, and they definitely won’t make you handsome like me. They’ll only make you have shoes like me. That’s it. ~ Charles Barkley
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
Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. ~ G. K. Chesterton
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. ~ G. K. Chesterton
It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, as long as you’ve got money. ~ Joe E. Lewis
It isn’t necessary to be rich and famous to be happy. It’s only necessary to be rich. ~ Alan Alda
Poor people have more fun than rich people, they say, and I notice it’s the rich people who keep saying it. ~ Jack Paar
In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face. ~ Diogenes of Sinope
He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich. ~ Evelyn Waugh
The only thing I like about rich people is their money. ~ Nancy Astor
You can never become rich unless you like rich people. ~ Doug Coupland
There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can’t think of one at the moment. ~ Paul Theroux
People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius. ~ Jerry Lewis
Live rich, die poor; never make the mistake of doing it the other way round. ~ Walter Annenberg
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: “Whose?” ~ Don Marquis
Stand not too near the rich man lest he destroy thee, and not too far away lest he forget thee. ~ Aneurin Bevan
Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. ~ Oscar Wilde
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing. ~ Dave Barry
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving. ~ Russell Green
I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money. ~ Pablo Picasso
Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor, at least no one worth speaking of. ~ Douglas Adams
I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. ~ Mark Twain
You often ask me, Priscus, what sort of person I should be, if I were to become suddenly rich and powerful. Who can determine what would be his future conduct? Tell me, if you were to become a lion, what sort of a lion would you be? ~ Marcus Valerius Martial, Epigrams (bk. XII, ep. 92)
Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes. ~ Will Durant
If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. ~ John Maynard Keynes
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. ~ Rex Stout
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
It ain’t so much trouble to get rich as it is to tell when we have got rich. ~ Josh Billings
I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I’ll bet I’d be darling at it. ~ Dorothy Parker
If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars. ~ J. Paul Getty
Just Above Sunset 