The character of girls must depend upon their reading as much as upon the company they keep. Besides the intrinsic pleasure to be derived from solid knowledge, a woman ought to consider it as her best resource against poverty.
- Mrs. Taylor as quoted by Oscar Wilde1
If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty.
- Oscar Wilde1
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor.
- Oscar Wilde1
rappers nowadays are comedy
the hootin’ and the hollerin’
back and forth with all the arguin’
where you from, who you know,
what you make and what kind of car you in
seems as though you lost sight
of what’s important with the positive
and checks into your bank account
and you up out of poverty
your values is a disarray,
prioritizin’ horribly
unhappy with your riches
’cause your piss poor morally
ignoring all prior advice and forewarnin’
and we might full of ourselves all of a sudden,
aren’t we?
Chorus:
you’re gonna be a shining star
fancy clothes, fancy cars
and then you’ll see
you’re gonna go far
cause everyone knows,
who you are
so live your life
you steady chasing that paper
just live your life
ain’t got no time for no haters
just life your life
no telling where it’ll take ya
just life your life
cause I’m a paper chaser
just living my life,
my life, my life, my life
just living my life,
my life, my life, my life
- T.I ft. Rihanna
Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The god of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.
- Oscar Wilde1
So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
-Ayn Rand1
, pg. 405 [↩]People who have little thought of the relations of the rich to the poor generally assume that all that is necessary is for the rich to give to the poor, or that they should be compelled to give part of their wealth, and all would be well. But this is a great mistake. The whole thing is in the distribution. If there is a poor man, it is always because the distribution effected by the laws in regard to the acquisition of property, the labour, and the relation of the classes is irregular; and so, to correct this irregular distribution, another has to be established. But to take from the rich and give to the poor does not mean to make a new distribution, but only to introduce a great confusion into the old distribution.
- Leo Tolstoy1
Surely, said she, there is some magic in wealth, which can thus make persons pay their court to it, when it does not even benefit themselves. How strange it is, that a fool or a knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good or wise man in poverty!
- Ann Radcliffe1
Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man; real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul there are infinitely precious things that may not be taken from you. Try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you; and try, also, to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.
- Oscar Wilde1
My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all. God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We’ve had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it’s just about depleted. Everyone’s just about out of gumption. And I think it’s about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource…individual worth. There are political reactionaries who’ve been saying something close to this for years. I’m not one of them, but to the extent they’re talking about real individual worth and not just an excuse for giving more money to the rich, they’re right. We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance and old-fashioned gumption. We really do.
- Robert M. Pirsig1
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