Money Quotes

In line with a project I've been working on, I compiled a bunch of quotes about money, i.e., money quotes:

“Cursed he be above all others who’s enslaved by love of money.” – Anacreon, Greek lyric poet, 500 BC

“Of all the foul growths current in the world, the worst is money.” Sophocles 442 BC

“Love of money is the mother of all evils.” Diogenes the Cynic, 400-325 BC

“By right means if you can, but by any means makes money.” Horace, 13 BC

“Money, it has been said, is the cause of good things to a good man and of evil things to a bad man.” Philo, 20 BC-45 AD

“O cursed lust of gold!” Virgil, 19 BC

“The love of money grows as the money itself grows.” Juvenal, 60-140 AD (Crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit)

“He is bound fast by his wealth…his money owns him rather than he owns it.” St. Cyprian, 200-258

“All things obeyen to moneye.” Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 1387-1400

“Money alone, so far from being a means of defense, will only make a prince more liable to being plundered.” Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513

“When depreciated, mutilated, or debased coinage (or currency) is in concurrent circulation with money of high value in terms of precious metals, the good money automatically disappears.” Sir Thomas Gresham, 1519-1579, from the Columbia Encyclopedia

“Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.” Francis Bacon, 1561-1626

“Good policy is to be used that the treasure and monies in a state be not gathered into few hands.” Francis Bacon, 1561-1626

“The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom; that which we eagerly pursue is the instrument of slavery.” Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1781

“They say that knowledge is power. I used to think so, but I now know that they mean money.” Lord Byron, 1788-1824

“O money, money how blindly thou hast been worshipped, and how stupidly abused!” Charles Lamb, 1809

“The worst form of currency in circulation regulates the value of the whole currency and drives all other forms of currency out of circulation.” Henry Dunning Macleod, 1821-1902

“Almighty dollar.” Washington Irving, Wolforth’s Roost, The Creole Village, 1836

“Aristocracy of Feudal Parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a natural course, we arrive at the Aristocracy of the Moneybag…the basest yet known.” Thomas Carlyle, 1837

“The mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control.” Andrew Jackson, 1837

“Time is money.” Lord Lytton, 1840

“Money…like the radical leveler that it is, does away with all distinctions.” Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867

“The good Lord gave me my money.” John D. Rockefeller, 1894

“Time is money – says the vulgarest saw known to any age or people. Turn it round about, and you get a precious truth – money is time.” George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, 1903

“Money…ranks with love as man’s greatest joy. And it ranks with death as his greatest source of anxiety.” John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 1977

“The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly.” Woodrow Wilson

“Money has no value; it’s just the way you spend it.” William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, 1929

“The insolence of authority is endeavoring to substitute money for ideas.” Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957

“U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion” The Onion, Feb. 16, 2010

Here's some bonus quotes that aren't about money:

“A comprehended god is no god.” Dio Chrysostom

“The first reaction to truth is hatred.” Tertllian,  197 AD

“Reality is a historical process.” Hegel