Neal Stephenson Quotes

If you don't own Gold, you know neither history nor economics.

If you want an alternative currency, check out gold. It has stood the test of thousands of years as a store of value and medium of exchange.

I don't even look at gold as gold anymore. Gold is just another piece of paper.

The major asset in this category is gold, currently a huge favorite of investors who fear almost all other assets, especially paper money (of whose value, as noted, they are right to be fearful). Gold, however, has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative. True, gold has some industrial and decorative utility, but the demand for these purposes is both limited and incapable of soaking up new production. Meanwhile, if you own one ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still own one ounce at its end.

Everyone asks about gold. This is the irony: just as Jim Grant tells us (correctly) that we all have faith-based paper currencies backed by nothing, it is equally fair to say that gold is a faith-based metal. It pays no dividend, cannot be eaten, and is mostly used for nothing more useful than jewelry. I would say that anything of which 75% sits idly and expensively in bank vaults is, as a measure of value, only one step up from the Polynesian islands that attached value to certain well-known large rocks that were traded.

Now, Gold and Silver contribute very little in their own nature to our Lives, for which all Earthly Things seem to have been created. Yet Men, as if they would make Nature asham'd of this, have agreed to make those Metals of equal vaue to all other things, to make 'em the Price and Measrue of all, and the Instruments of changing and exchanging whatever can be found good in this World.

Money is just paper that gets us through life.

Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.

Gold is money. Everything else is credit.

Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it.

The superiority of the gold standard consists in the fact that the value of gold develops independent of political actions.

Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant.

If gold knew what gold is, gold would get gold I wis.

The utility, or intrinsic value of gold as a commodity is now considerably less than in the past; its monetary status has become extraordinarily ambiguous; and its future is highly uncertain.

The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.

There can be no other criterion, no other standard than gold. Yes, gold which never changes, which can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins, which has no nationality and which is eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value par excellence.

Gold has at all times been considered the best of testimonies of good faith.

O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper, which makes bank credit like a bark of vapour.

Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency, that no fiat currency, including the dollar, can match.

I like gold because it is a stabilizer; it is an insurance policy.

Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.

When goods are exchanged between countries, they must be paid for by commodities or gold. They cannot be paid for by the notes, certificates, and checks of the purchaser's country, since these are of value only in the country of issue.

By the experience of commercial nations in all ages it has been found that gold and silver afford the only safe foundation for a monetary system.

Gold and silver afford the only safe foundation for a monetary system.