Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

The biggest problem is our lack of "response-ability." That’s what happens when money rather than love is the bottom line. People act like idiots.

In the race for money some men may come first, but man comes last.

You know what's wrong with our waterfront? It's the love of a lousy buck. It's making the love of a buck, the cushy job, more important than the love of man. It's forgetting that every fellow down here's your brother in Christ.

Our fathers worshiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he worships the gold of the calf.

The problem is, we live in a society where all that interests us is power and money. So we don't have any interest in our children, and what we leave for our children is not important.

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.

I think people tend to be very myopic and they don't understand how their actions impact others.

We are shallow because we have become enslaved by gross materialism, the glitter of gold and its equivalents, for which reason we think that only the material goods of this earth can satisfy us and we must therefore grab as much as can while we are able.

If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you know they're just greedy, and consumers are just consuming for the sake of their own greed.

They who are of the opinion that Money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for Money.

The heart which finds life in material wealth is usually certain to go farther and seek for more in the satisfaction of base and sullen appetites.

The possession of wealth leads almost inevitably to its abuse. It is the chief, if not the only, cause of evils which desolate this world below. The thirst for gold is responsible for the most regrettable lapses into sin.

The ruling Passion of the Dutchman is Avarice. Of literature they know nothing, and they are seldom seen with a book.

The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.

Greed, greed, greed. That’s the fundamental problem of mankind. If we can solve that problem, the rest of man’s problems would follow. The only thing that can undermine our free society is greed.

It would be necessary to eliminate the excessive regard and esteem for wealth, because the craving for riches erodes the desire for true glory, prevents the cultivation of the virtues and results in countless seizures of what belongs to others, as well as many other dishonorable actions.

…mortals cannot cherish what is private without injury to the community…to the extent that we call anything our own it absorbs our affections and diverts them from the service of the common good.

For the purpose of acquiring gain, everything else is pushed aside or thrown overboard, for example, as is philosophy by the professors of philosophy.

How unfortunate and how narrowing a thing it is for a man to have wealth who makes a god of it instead of a servant.

… the mere money-making American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune.

The greed to make money in the present exceeds the gratitude we should have to the past.

My native land is a slave of heathenism, men's god is their belly, and they live only for the present. The richer a man, the holier.

Stupidity and human incompetence are the great evils, not ambition and glory.