Alan Watts Quotes

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.

The few men who possess the wealth of the material things of the earth at the present time are not truly happy.

The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.

The world no longer permits the stronger to kill the weaker, but it allows the wealthy to oppress the poor. Money is holier than man. Human life is less sacred than property. To save a dollar is regarded as a more necessary virtue than to save a human heart. Society cares more for fortune than for truth.

Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

Money brings some happiness. But after a certain point, it just brings more money.

People are chasing cash, not happiness. When you chase money, you're going to lose. You're just going to. Even if you get the money, you're not going to be happy.

Anybody who thinks money will make you happy, hasn't got money.

My own experience in the third world was that even if people started to make more money, the cost of living and housing increased often faster than the wages.

If someone offered me a hundred million dollars to make a movie? I would first remind him that there are 850 million people in the world who don't have enough to eat.

The man who has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer. He only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he is poor who though he has millions is covetous.

Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

'Great Expectations' has been described as 'Dickens's harshest indictment of society.' Which it is. After all, it's about money. About not having enough money; about the fever of the getting of money; about having too much money; about the taint of money.

A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

Ridding the world of poverty is, of course, a fantasy.

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice.

There are three ways by which an individual can get wealth—by work, by gift, and by theft. And, clearly, the reason why the workers get so little is that the beggars and thieves get so much.

Unequal wealth distribution is a risk factor for inequality that must be attacked by policies.

one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

‘Money can't buy happiness.’ That's just a lie we tell poor people to keep them from rioting in the streets

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.