Sunday, February 1, 2015 – Those Who Own the World
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
There are people who have money and people who are rich. ~ Coco Chanel
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
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. ~ Henry David Thoreau
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
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
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. ~ Francis Bacon
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
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
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich. ~ Samuel Johnson
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
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
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
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
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
It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness. ~ Thomas Jefferson
It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth. ~ Benjamin Franklin
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
Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Wars are caused by undefended wealth. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Ability is a poor man’s wealth. ~ John Wooden
It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed. ~ Kin Hubbard
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community. ~ Andrew Carnegie
No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth. ~ Charles Spurgeon
Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain’t lawful tender for a loaf of bread. ~ Josh Billings
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.~ Louis D. Brandeis
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt. ~ Ben Hecht
The modern economy isn’t about the redistribution of wealth; it’s about the redistribution of time. ~ Doug Coupland
Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time. ~ Margaret Bonnano
The most wanton torture is that of the rich trying to kill time. ~ Lewis F. Korns
The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner. ~ Mary McCarthy
An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth. ~ Bonnie Friedman
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. ~ Jean Rostand
Be charitable before wealth makes you covetous. ~ Thomas Browne
Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life. ~ Sean O’Casey
As soon as I find myself in the presence of a rich man, I cannot help looking upon him as an exceptional and beautiful being, as a sort of marvelous divinity, and, in spite of myself, surmounting my will and my reason, I feel rising, from the depths of my being, toward this rich man, who is very often an imbecile, and sometimes a murderer, something like an incense of admiration. Is it not stupid? And why? Why? ~ Octave Mirbeau, The Diary of a Chambermaid
Wealth has never the value to its possessor as it is supposed to have by an avaricious admirer. ~ Anthony Lisle, The Westminster Review, January. 1914
I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money. ~ Pablo Picasso
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
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
Fame and riches are fleeting. Stupidity is eternal. ~ Don Williams, Jr.
There’s no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can’t do any business from there. ~ Colonel Harlan Sanders
When the rich think about the poor, they have poor ideas. ~ Evita Perón
Wealth is what’s here on the premises. If I open a cupboard and see, say, thirty cans of tomato sauce and a five-pound bag of rice, I get a little thrill of well-being – much more so than if I take a look at the quarterly dividend report from my mutual fund. ~ Garrison Keillor
We never get far from wealth and all of its masks when we deal with power. ~ Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
The sun shines on the rich and the poor alike. But when it comes to rain, the rich have better umbrellas. ~ Dushan Wegner
Just Above Sunset 