Vladimir Potanin Quotes

I've never been that person who wants a Rolls Royce or wants to live in a mansion or what have you.

I've never had big diamonds; I never had big cars.

Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches.

We judge of entire nations by the productions of a few mechanical arts, and think we are talking of men, while we are boasting of their estates, their dress, and their palaces. The sense in which we apply the terms, great, and noble, high rank, and high life, show, that we have, on such occasions, transferred the idea of perfection from the character to the equipage; and that excellence itself is, in our esteem, a mere pageant, adorned at a great expense, by the labors of many workmen.

I am not the sort of person who will wake up and go and buy myself a Ferrari.

Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.

Riches are not forbidden, but the pride of them is.

If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

I wasn't brought up to be dazzled by money or fame.

You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. Go in any rich house and it's some weird coloured embossed stuff.

The media is convincing people that if you have that 'next thing,' that diamond, the right car, then you'd be happier.

This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high.

Growing up in Hollywood meant there were a lot of film stars' kids at my school - but no conspicuous wealth. It wasn't cool to show off that you had money.

I always tried to live my life as though nothing changed. People would say, 'You can have a Rolls-Royce'. I'd say to that, 'What do I want with a Rolls-Royce when I can have a Volkswagen or a bike?' Some people get carried away with the juice.

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

…luxury is the result of wealth, or it makes wealth necessary. It corrupts both rich and poor, the one by possessing, the other by coveting. It sells out the fatherland to indolence and vanity; it deprives the State of all its Citizens by enslaving some of them to others and all of them to opinion.

I think something about high school students being snobby about how much they have or don't have is particularly absurd because it's not theirs. It's their parents'. So to feel quite good about yourself because you've got the fancy house and car doesn't make any sense - you didn't earn any of that.

I've been offered private planes, and I'm like, 'No!'

I'm not a big car person. I'm not into lots of fancy things.

I'm O.K. having a comfortable life. I don't have to live in a mansion and drive Aston Martins or Ferraris.

I still have my feet on the ground; it's just that I wear expensive shoes.

I've never been somebody who needs their car or other material, larger possessions to say something flashy about them.

I know I've been lucky, but I'm not very materialistic - I don't believe in collecting many unnecessary things and I'm not into girlie shopping.

The passion of acquiring riches in order to support a vain expense corrupts the purest souls.