Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

George Herbert

The love of money and the love of learning rarely meet.

Learning | Love of learning | Love of money | Love | Money |

Gregory Bateson

Money is always transitively valued. More money is supposedly always better than less money.

Better | Money |

Gustave Le Bon

The money that we possess is the instrument of our freedom, what we purchase with it is that of our servitude.

Money |

Herman Hesse

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.

Man | Money | Pleasure | Power |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

Money | World | Value |

Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Money |

Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux

Give a child the habit of sacredly regarding the truth--of carefully respecting the property of others--of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of improvidence which can involve him in distress, and he will just as likely think of rushing into the element in which he cannot breathe, as of lying or cheating or stealing.

Habit | Lying | Property | Will | Child | Think |

Jacob Needleman

If money were more important to us we would understand how it influences everything in our lives. Love and hatred, eating and sleeping, safety and danger, work and rest, marriage, children, fear, loneliness ... think of where we go, how we travel, with whom we associate ... The money factor is there, wrapped around or lodged inside everything. Money is the raw material out of which we build our lives. But because we don't take money more seriously, we have come to know the price of everything and the meaning of nothing.

Important | Loneliness | Love | Meaning | Money | Price | Work | Think | Understand |

Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

Unless we cut the world population there is no way to avoid violence. People are hungry, people are starving, dying. When somebody is hungry he is going to steal. When somebody is dying, what does he care if he kills somebody else and gets money to survive? -- because lust for life is the basis of all biological growth. A man can do anything to survive.

Care | Life | Life | Lust | Man | Money | People | World |

Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

Discontentment is human, contentment is divine. Animals know neither contentment nor discontentment; they simply go on living mechanically, unconsciously. It is the great privilege of human being to be aware of discontent. To be aware of discontent means there is a possibility to grow towards contentment. But very few people make any effort towards inner growth. Their whole life is rooted in a misunderstanding. They think that if they have a bigger house or more money or more power or more prestige they will be contented; that if they become famous, if their name is known all over the world, then they will be contented. That is sheer nonsense.

Contentment | Discontent | Effort | Life | Life | Means | Money | People | Power | Will | Privilege | Think |

Jacob Needleman

I want to understand what, precisely, it is in ourselves that prevents great truth from penetrating into our lives and therefore which prevents us from acting ethically in the only real sense of the word. Ethically means acting and being in the service of what is the true greatness of oneself as Man. I've studied many aspects of our culture from this perspective - science, education, medicine, religion. But now I see that in our society, in our world, it is our relation to money that needs to be understood. If great truth does not enter into our relation to money, it cannot enter our lives.

Culture | Greatness | Means | Money | Sense | Service | Truth | Understand |

James Bovard

With attention deficit democracy, I am trying to wake up people to how the combination of mass ignorance, fear mongering by the government, and lying politicians is putting our entire system of government to a death spiral.

Attention | Death | Fear | Government | Lying | People | System | Government |

James A. Garfield

He who controls the money supply of a nation controls the nation.

Money |

James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin

It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate what is constant - birth, struggle, and death are constant - and so is love, though we may not always think so - and to apprehend the nature of change, to be able and willing to change. I speak of change not on the surface but in the depths - change in the sense of renewal. But renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not - safety, for example, or money or power. One clings then to chimeras, but which one can only be betrayed, and the entire hope - the entire possibility - of freedom disappears.

Change | Death | Freedom | Hope | Men | Money | Nature | Responsibility | Sense | Trust | Think |

Jean Vanier

Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.

Love | Money | Need | People | World |

James Madison

History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance.

Control | Means | Money |

James Rachels

Is it worse to kill someone than to let someone die? It seems obvious to common sense that it is worse. We allow people to die, for example, when we fail to contribute money to famine-relief efforts; but even if we feel somewhat guilty, we do not consider ourselves murderers. Nor do we feel like accessories to murder when we fail to give blood, sign an organ-donor card, or do any of the other things that could save lives. Common sense tells us that, while we may not kill people, our duty to give them aid is much more limited.

Aid | Common Sense | Duty | Kill | Money | Murder | People | Sense | Murder |

John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls

In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed.

Money | System |

John Hersey, fully John Richard Hersey

Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.

Duty | Life | Life | Money | Will | Work |