Thomas Jefferson Quotes

He who knows how to be poor knows everything.

I've always found it very sanitary to be broke.

I'm doing my best to stay off that financing scheme that relies on this one strip of capital, which is the red carpet. And - no sob story - but it's hard. It takes a while.

What's happened to society is we've become really pretentious. But there was a time in my life where I really had to choose between boiling potatoes and paying my gas bill, so I'd buy a can of potatoes.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.

Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.

He is not poor that hath not much, but he that craves much.

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.

People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people's home lives, domestic stuff.

I was eating beans by candle light for a decade.

It is difficult to describe in short the enthusiasm and devotion provoked by and given to my research. We lived almost in poverty. I used pencils, two for a nickel, and could not buy a fountain pen, when I lost mine.

My wife, Sharon, and I started with nothing when we got married. I was driving a 1902 Pinto and eating off a card table.

Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent.

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.

We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation.

I prefer to stay poor.

I don't miss the economic insecurity, the living paycheck to paycheck.

The way I look at it, everything is a trade. You acquire some money, so then you've got no financial burdens, but everyone wants your money and so who can you trust? Or you've got no money and you can trust anyone, but then you've got the worry to pay bills. Which is worse?

Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.

I've lived so frugally for so long. I have to have that financial security or the world feels out of control for me.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

If we were poor, we didn't know it 'cause I guess you don't miss what you never had. So, you know, we made do with whatever. We used to make our own toys, and we used to play with spinning tops and marbles. A pocket full of marbles, and you were rich - you didn't worry about no money.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

We were rather poor, but we always had what we needed.

When my parents were dating, they were very poor, so my dad couldn't take my mom out. They would go to the grocery store and pick out funny looking vegetables. When I grew up, we'd still go and find the ones with personality.