Honore de Balzac Quotes

The billionaire who sits on his money and doesn't do anything for the common good - I'm not interested in that person.

It's an irony that growing inequality could mean more money for philanthropy. In the U.S., quite a few of the ultra-rich have taken to heart the 19th century industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie's comment that it's a disgrace to die wealthy.

The world needs a person like me so that many other rich people will be able to follow my role model. If they do, many poor people will be helped.

The responsibility of philanthropy rests with us. The wealthier we are, the more powerful we get. We cannot put the entire onus on the government.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

We have so many rich people in Switzerland. They should take more responsibility for the general public. There is almost no tradition of philanthropy here anymore, unlike in the U.S.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

I don't dislike people with a lot of money, but richer people need tax relief less than others.

Crowdfunding companies like GoFundMe are in themselves not evil. But the fact that we have to rely on them to pay for our basics is.

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least--the privilege of making others happy.

There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them.

The trickle-down theory of economics has it that it's good for rich people to get even richer because some of their wealth will trickle own, through their no doubt lavish spending, upon those who stand below them on the economic ladder. Notice that the metaphor is not that of a gushing waterfall but of a leaking tap: even the most optimistic endorsers of this concept do not picture very much real flow, as their language reveals" pg. 102.

A person's level of income and their desire to give have nothing to do with one another.

The rich have no more of the kingdom of heaven than they have purchased of the poor by their alms.

Most rich people are the poorest people I know.

There are rich people, and there are those who have money. They are not the same people.

The interesting thing about class warfare is that it's only class warfare if it's up, not down. If you talk about welfare cheats or something, that's not class warfare because it's down; you have to talk about rich people before it's class warfare.

The only people who really worry about money are the very poor and the very rich.

Do not really like rich people, as they make us poor people feel dopey and inadequate. Not that we are poor. I would say we are middle. We are very, very lucky. I know that. But still, it is not right that rich people make us middle people feel dopey and inadequate.

Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.

Many people despise wealth, but few know how to give it away.

As a rule, only the poor are generous.

It's always the rich and there's plenty to waste, yet still China has a lot of people living in very spare, poor conditions.