James Altucher Quotes

I'm sorry - I know America is supposed to be the land of the dreams and hopes, but it's like, when was that actually a real thing? I think from the very beginning it was all a lie, and it still kind of is. Stop trying to sell the picket fence, because there's another backyard here that you haven't looked at.

The truth is that I've always been fascinated with wealth in America. To me, it's been about the American dream and the corruption of that dream.

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.

The American Dream - that's our folly. That's our folly. Look where we're ending up.

I've lived the American Dream, but, sadly, for too many, the American Dream is fading.

The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out.

Architects of grandeur are often the master builders of disillusionment.

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.

I'm a capitalist. I'm not going to feel sympathetic to people leading a life they don't have to lead who, with effort, could maybe break out of it.

My dreams are all follies.

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

Life isn't what it's like in the movies.

Maybe we should have known that night in Denver that things that begin with plywood Greek columns and artificial smoke typically don't end well. Maybe the Hollywood stars and the glamour blinded us a little: you thought it was the glare, some of us thought it was a halo.

Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is.

One is forever throwing away substance for shadows.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

I was trying to sell a dream ... There was very little I could put in concrete to tell these people it was really real.

People who look for easy money invariably pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this sordid earth.

From my own kind I only learn How foolish comfort is

Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it—because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords.

You just want fame so bad. You want success so bad. You just believe anybody who conjures up a pretty contract and they're telling you all these sweet nothings I guess.