Tao Te Ching
Walt Disney
Wealth
Wealth isn't "good" or "bad" in itself—everything depends on context. Wealth is a powerful and useful tool but a destructive deity as it has become in most places and times. One of the 4 Worldly Dharmas—along with Fame, Pleasure, and Power—Wealth easily becomes an addictive and powerful influence over our lives and decisions. The less thoughtful make choices based on short-term over long-term results; the more strategic and aware make the more mid- and long-range choices; but still, the materialistic approach to wealth prevails reeking havoc in its wake. How many leaders, countries, movements, civilizations, and everyday people have crashed into corruption, ignominy, and suffering by following the siren-calls of money-seeking? Of course, we need some form of money and wealth to survive and most-often need to make some kind of Faustian compromise in order to secure it. The main choice may only be how much we’re willing to give up and with how much self-awareness we can maintain in the process. Closely linked to the Desire defined by the Buddha as the cause of Suffering, our experience of and relationship to Wealth is ignored only at our great peril.
Quotes (135)
“Ravana all your wealth is wasted, what's the use of being rich if you won't spend your gold to do good for other people?”
“Ravana all your wealth is wasted, what's the use of being rich if you won't spend your gold to do good for other people?”
“The weak progresses and goes upward. (Hexagram 35) The yielding pushes upward with the time.. However, the pushing up certainly begins at the bottom… At the top is decrease and not wealth.”
“Danger arises when a man feels secure in his positon. Destruction threatens when a man seeks to preserve his worldly estate. Confusion develops when a man has put everything in order.”
“Chasing fame, fortune, pleasure and power only drives us crazy.”
“I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles.”
“If there were an honorable way to get rich, I’d do it, even if it meant being a stooge standing around with a whip. But there isn’t an honorable way, so I just do what I like.”
“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
“Happiness does not come from fame, riches, or virtue. It only arises when posterity—reflecting on our life—believes it to be a life they would wish to live.”
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
“Aren't you ashamed to care so much to make all the money you can, and to advance your reputation and prestige -while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul you have no care or worry?”
“Small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.”
“When I was a boy, wealth was regarded as a thing so secure and admirable that almost everyone affected to own more property than possessed... now a man has to be ready to defend himself against being rich as if it were the worst of crimes.”
“If your Majesty loves wealth, give the people power to gratify the same feeling, and what difficulty will there be in your attaining the royal sway?”
“The rich should help the poor, and the powerful should aid the oppressed. If instead they flaunt their riches and power, they are sure to suffer disaster…When your work is done, if you do not step down, you will meet with harm.”
“In a degenerate society, those who possess the wealth of the land and are in positions of authority over others exhaust the energy of the common people to serve their own sensual desires.”
“Sages do not need authority to be noble, do not need wealth to be rich, and do not need power to be strong. Peaceful and empty, they are not subject to outside influences; they fly freely with evolution.”
“We fail to take into account the sources of our desires when we make moral choices, not recognizing, for example, that the desire for great wealth or reputation is so empty and vain.”
“There is nothing more honorable or noble than indifference to money. There is nothing so characteristic of narrowness and littleness of soul than the love of riches.”
“The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.”
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
“It’s harder for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich person to pass into the kingdom of heaven.”
“If you wish to know how much preferable wisdom is to gold, then observe: if you change gold you get silver for it, but your gold is gone; but if you exchange one sort of wisdom for another, you obtain fresh knowledge, and at the same time keep what you possessed before.”
“For I am one who strives for freedom. I must not be caught by wealth and honors.”
“wealth eventually swallows its owner
spread it around and blessings grow
hoard it and disaster arises
no wealth no disaster
flap your wings in the blue”
“A greedy man who piles up wealth
is like an owl who loves her chicks
the chicks grow up and eat their mother.
Wealth eventually swallows its owner.
Spread it around and blessings grow.”
“An old lady who lives to the east got rich a few years ago. Before poorer than me,now she mocks my poverty. She laughs that I’m behind, I laugh that she’s ahead. It seems we can’t stop laughing from the east and from the west.”
“Transform the lust for power and riches into the desire to relate to all beings, destroy every demon that enters your mind.”
“Everyone wants precious items and beautiful women but the Sage doesn’t allow them to throw his mind into chaos.”
“When the Sage's wealth accumulates, he gives it away. When his Virtue accumulates, he acts.”
“When soldiers become farmers, wealth naturally distributes and equalizes.”
“discard all you have acquired as being no better than a bed spread for you when you were sick.”
“The wealth that comes from giving generously is inexhaustible. The power that arises from not accumulating is boundless”
“When the treasure wealth of a great chieftain is kept, it doesn't increase; but when given away, it does.”
“Heroes seek fame and merchants seek wealth, even to the point of giving up their lives… But the more wealth they amass, the more they harm what they would truly enrich… The wise know the most precious thing is within themselves so they seek no wealth and encounter no trouble.”
“The natural endowment of all beings is complete in itself. Poverty does not reduce it. Wealth does not enlarge it. But fools abandon this treasure to chase trash.”
“What else imperils and slays cities, countries, and individuals as much as the amassing of wealth which cannot be gained without harming others?”
“Always panting for riches and never giving our souls or our bodies a moment's peace, we are thrown into a continuous state of misery and anxiety.”
“There are no wise mega-rich people - who could look out upon this world and hoard what could nourish a thousand souls. ” 
“What greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?”
“You neither desire wealth nor greatness; and, indeed, I value and admire such a man much more than I do any of the great men in the world.”
“All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”
“With great wealth endless worries quickly come and peace of mind quickly leave. You become a target of envy and you don’t know if people are only pretending to like you for an advantage. Fears of theft and robbery arise. What chance is there for enjoying life?”
“Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things.”
“I have enjoyed the veneration of my country and the riches of the world; there is no object I do not have, nothing I have not experienced. But now that I have reached old age, I cannot rest easy for a moment. Therefore, I regard the whole country as a worn-out sandal, and all riches as mud and sand.”
“I have never seen the Philosopher’s Stone that turns lead into Gold, but I have known the pursuit of it turn a Man’s Gold into Lead.”
“There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war...This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle.”
“Wine and sex distract from reality, the lure of wealth deranges our nature, emotions and desires arise in a tangle and we become lost in confusion.”
“I’ve never bothered about getting ahead… What use is there in fame and fortune? In my hut, I listen to the evening rain and stretch my legs without a care in the world.”
“Riches are like sea water: the more you drink, the thirstier you become; and the same is true of fame.”
“The wealth of the soul is the only true wealth, for with all other riches comes a bane even greater than they.”
“Wealth is a power usurped by the few to compel the many to labor for their benefit.”
“Others will enjoy the wealth we as misers kept. Even our body we hold so dear will be left behind.”
“that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it… and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.”
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
“The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue”
“They have managed to accumulate a greater number of things but joy in the world has grown less… Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires, men distort their own nature for they thus engender in themselves many senseless and foolish desires, habits, and absurd fancies.”
“Almost all that has been done for the good of the people has been done since the rich lost the monopoly of power, since the rights of property were discovered to be not unlimited”
“Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”
“It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.”
“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
“The irresistible natural truth which we all abhor and repudiate: the greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty, and that our first duty is not to be poor.”
“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.”
“Wealth is dismal and poverty cruel unless both are festive. There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”
“If we look into the souls and thoughts of men, we shall find that this impressive display of material prosperity is merely the shining garment of a polity blind to things without and things within, and blind to the future.”
“And he was rich – yes, richer than a king.
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.”
“Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident… they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.”
“Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistibly invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie.”
“Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, and had to go through Gethsemane. Now the rich men of the West are worshiping Jesus, and it is the poor who are going through Gethsemane.”
“Modern man no longer knows what to do with the time and the potentialities he has unleashed. We groan under the burden of this wealth.”
“Surrounded by treasure, you lie ill at ease; proud beyond measure, you come to your knees”
“Wealth in the modern world does not come merely from individual effort; it results from a combination... the people in the mass have inevitably helped to make large fortunes possible. Without mass cooperation great accumulations of wealth would be impossible.”
“I would not exchange the laughter of my heart for the fortunes of the multitudes.”
“In progressive societies the concentration of wealth may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.”
“It's delightful to contemplate a society where art is more respected than wealth; but, art can only be the flower that grows out of wealth. It cannot be wealth's substitute. The Medici came before Michelangelo”
“The rich have butlers and no friends, and we have friends and no butlers.”
“This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country´s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of W. Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by few.”
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.”
“A rich man collects cattle and hoards of grain, or the money which stands for them. He does not worry about men; it is enough that he can buy them.”
“wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated.
”
“Mendoza said to Tanner, ‘I am a brigand; I live by robbing the rich.’ Tanner replied, ‘I am a gentleman; I live by robbing the poor. Shake hands.’”
“An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
“a Zen master was once asked what was the most valuable thing in the world and the master answered that a dead cat was, because no one could put a price on it.”
“In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, 'why don't I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,' and they abandon their values.”
“True wealth is not measured in money or status or power. It is measured in the legacy we leave behind for those we love and those we inspire.”
“To accumulate wealth, power or land beyond one's needs in a limited world is to be truly immoral, be it as an individual, an institution, or a nation-state.”
“wealth is not so much possessed as it is performed... We display the success of what we have done by not having to do anything.”
“The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - and so destroys democracy.”
“The source of energy which need not be sought is… that you are rich rather than being enriched by something else.”
“If we are passionate, if we are in love or in a lustful state, we begin to feel that there is an enormous amount of glue sprayed all over the world… We want to be stuck to things, to objects, wealth, money, friends… so we begin to spray this crude glue all over the place. We are asking to be stuck.”
“Don't gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.”
“If it were not for certain people's greed for wealth, the highways would be filled with cars powered by the sun, and no one would be starving. Such advances are technologically and physically possible, but apparently not emotionally possible.”
“Richness and meaning don't lie outside of us. And life not just about 'what can I get?' or 'what don't I have?'... With this unrestricted mind of richness, even a beggar on the street can feel like a universal monarch.”
“We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.”
“A wealthy upbringing compounds stupidity while a hardscrabble childhood dilutes it.”
“because it abstracts the value of things... we don't do well with abundance... By its very nature, scale creates distance... the more we have, the less we seen to value what we've got,”
“In spite of their wealth and power, they swim in an ocean of pain, which is sometimes so deep that suicide seems the only escape. Such intense pain results from believing that objects or situations can create lasting happiness.”
“Capitalism distinguishes 'capital' from mere 'wealth'. Capital consists of money, goods, and resources that are invested in production. Wealth on the other hand, is buried in the ground or wasted on unproductive activities.”
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