Looking for the best quotes about money? This list of 100 is a good place to start!
Oh, how money influences us and everything around us! To quote the 1966 musical Cabaret, “money makes the world go around.”
I have always been intrigued by the thoughts of philosophers, politicians, authors, poets, celebrities, laymen, economists, entrepreneurs, and others on the topic of money. In fact, as a teenager, I had a diary where I wrote down every nice-sounding quote I could find on money, investing, love, and more.
Mind you, the internet was not yet “a thing,” so I had to put pen to paper to muse over the words of the wise and powerful!
Irrespective of what your ideas, biases, and sentiments are about money, the fact is that MONEY is IMPORTANT. However, it is not EVERYTHING!
Below are some of the most memorable, interesting, and quirky things men and women have said about money through the ages.
Enjoy!
Best Money Quotes For Building Wealth
1. Never spend your money before you have earned it. — Thomas Jefferson
2. It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy. — George Lorimer
3. Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work. — Robert Orben
4. Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves. — Zig Ziglar
5. Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. — William Arthur Ward
6. Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks – it says, “Goodbye.” — Frank Sinatra
7. A single idea — the sudden flash of a thought — may be worth a million dollars. — Robert Collier
8. Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn. — Miguel de Cervantes
9. There is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich. — Marlene Dietrich
10. When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is. — Oscar Wilde
11. Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
12. Money is usually attracted, not pursued. — Jim Rohn
13. If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. — Edmund Burke
14. I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died. — Malcolm Forbes
15. Too many people spend money they haven’t earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like. — Will Rogers
16. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. — Ayn Rand
17. A simple fact that is hard to learn is that the time to save money is when you have some. — Joe Moore
18. Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are. — James W. Frick
19. If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting. — Benjamin Franklin
20. Today the greatest single source of wealth is between your ears. — Brian Tracy
21. Many folks think they aren’t good at earning money, when what they don’t know is how to use it. — Frank A. Clark
22. Every time you borrow money, you’re robbing your future self. — Nathan Morris
23. You’ve got to tell your money what to do or it will leave. — Dave Ramsey
24. Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant. — P.T. Barnum
25. If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life. — Billy Graham
26. The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place. — Jim Rohn
27. Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort. — Helen Gurley Brown
28. A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.
Bob Hope
29. Money will buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail. — Richard Friedman
Related: Best Quotes About Debt.
30. Business is the art of extracting money from another man’s pocket without resorting to violence. — Max Amsterdam
31. Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale. — Zig Ziglar
32. One penny may seem to you a very insignificant thing, but it is the small seed from which fortunes spring. — Orison Swett Marden
33. Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, invest as much as you can, give as much as you can. — John Wesley
34. If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion. — George Bernard Shaw
35. To make a million, start with $900,000. — Morton Shulman
36. All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy. — Spike Milligan
37. Making money is a hobby that will complement any other hobbies you have, beautifully. — Scott Alexander
38. I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by four o’clock. — Henny Youngman
39. If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. — Henry Ford
40. A feast is prepared for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.
King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 10:19)
41. Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. — Woody Allen
42. Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it. — David Lee Roth
43. I make myself rich by making my wants few. — Henry David Thoreau
44. It’s not your salary that makes you rich, it’s your spending habits. — Charles Jaffe
45. You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you. — Dave Ramsey
46. It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for. — Robert Kiyosaki
47. 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. — Oscar Wilde
48. Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants. — Benjamin Franklin
49. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery. — Charles Dickens
50. Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. — Donald Trump
Related: 100 best Investment Quotes.
Best Quotes About Money and Life
51. While money doesn’t buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position. — Christopher Marlowe
52. Financial peace isn’t the acquisition of stuff. It’s learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can’t win until you do this. — Dave Ramsey
53. Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. — Norman Vincent Peale
54. Money cannot buy peace of mind. It cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none. — Richard M. DeVos
55. Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs. — Zig Ziglar
56. Wealth is the ability to fully experience life. — Henry David Thoreau
57. I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money. — Pablo Picasso
58. The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind. — T.T. Munger
59. Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells. — J. Paul Getty
60. My formula for success is rise early, work late and strike oil.
J. Paul Getty
61. You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it. — Tennessee Williams
62. Every day is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we’ve got 24 hours each. — Christopher Rice
63. Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it. — Albert Einstein
64. You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you. — Maya Angelou
65. Money is the best deodorant. — Elizabeth Taylor
66. Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow. — Thornton Wilder
67. He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all. — Eleanor Roosevelt
68. Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant. — P.T. Barnum
69. More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth. — Napoleon Hill
70. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. — Winston Churchill
71. If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone. — Benjamin Franklin
72. When a man says money can do anything, that settles it. He hasn’t any. — George Bernard Shaw
73. No man’s credit is ever as good as his money. — Edgar Watson Howe
74. Money doesn’t talk, it swears. — Bob Dylan
75. Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
Epictetus
76. Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it. –Timothy Ferriss
Related: Best Personal Finance Books.
77. Money can’t buy happiness, but it will certainly get you a better class of memories. — Ronald Reagan
78. Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune. — Jim Rohn
79. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your back pocket. — Will Rogers
80. Money: power at its most liquid. — Mason Cooley
81. A budget is telling your money where to go, instead of wondering where it went. — John C. Maxwell
82. Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it insures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises. — Aristotle
83. If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments. — Earl Wilson
84. Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. — Ayn Rand
85. The way to wealth depends on just two words, industry and frugality. — Benjamin Franklin
86. Mo money mo problems — Notorious B.I.G.
87. Dogs have no money. Isn’t that amazing? They’re broke their entire lives. But they get through. You know why dogs have no money? No Pockets. — Jerry Seinfeld
88. Beware of small expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. — Benjamin Franklin
89. The more you learn, the more you earn. — Frank Clark
90. Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
91. If God has allowed me to earn so much money, it is because He knows I give it all away. — Edit Piaf
92. To get rich, you have to be making money while you’re asleep. — David Bailey
93. Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it. — Mark Twain
94. When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. — Voltaire
95. Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust. — Oliver Wendell
96. The Best Way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream. — Bill Murray
97. I despise the Lottery. There’s less chance of you becoming a millionaire than there is of getting hit on the head by a passing asteroid. — Brian May
98. We didn’t actually overspend our budget. The allocation simply fell short of our expenditure. – Keith Davis
99. I don’t like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves. — Joe Louis
100. Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions. – A.A. Latimer
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