Aphorisms on Money

We invented language to communicate more easily with one another and money to trade more effortlessly. It is worth learning the language of money.

Money is an invention abused by many and understood by even fewer.

There is a mnemonic for understanding money: banknotes are diplomas we humans give and receive in exchange for fine achievements and quality goods.

Those who work earn money. Those who invest allow their money to earn money too.

Those who have no money find life easier than those who believe they never have enough.

Money does not make life better, but it makes it easier. Yet, a life with vast wealth is as burdensome as one without. With money, as with all things, it is a matter of finding the right measure.

Those who fear having too little money rarely consider how much fear great wealth can bring.

Those who do not understand money are exploited profitably by banks. Those who understand money deal with banks to their own profit.

Banks exist to serve people, but bankers seek to rule over them. All rule fades; only service endures.

Most debts begin with a trade: for time, for peace, for dignity. Be cautious—not everything is worth the exchange.

Those who have money lose money. Those who invest money gain money.

Money is not to be hoarded but to be invested.

There is a poverty that money can create: the illusion that it defines who you are.

Many inherit money without inheriting any notion of what money means.

Money changes hands even when you wish to give it to no one.

There has never been a true democracy—it will exist only when the majority of taxes are regularly distributed to citizens as a societal dividend.

A state is a democracy only when its citizens hold not just voting rights but ownership rights in it.

There is no democracy without societal dividends.

There is no greater wealth than the wealth of imagination.