Herman J. Mankiewicz Quotes

When success comes, people can try to trick you or take advantage of you.

There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful.

Success and money can really be quite blinding.

People have nannies and big cars, and they want to go to Maui for Christmas. When there are those kind of stakes involved, people get ruthless.

After I asked him [a student] what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement. No decent society can tolerate that definition.

The growth of New England was a result of the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in his narrow circle toiling for himself, to gather competence or wealth. The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt.

There are those who'd rob a blind man of his eyelashes if they could.

The only way to the top is killing and greed. Okay, I'm kidding. But killing helps.

There's also the idea in this country [USA], it's not wholly new, but it's new in its kind of purity, in that you have to be really smart to be really rich. I always say to people, the reason people believe this is a) they've never met a really smart person, and b) they've never met a really rich person. I have met both, and I cannot see the crossover. You do not have to be a genius to get rich. You have to be ruthless to get rich.

Get what you can, and what you get hold; 'tis the Stone that will turn all your Lead into Gold.

Sometimes I'm surprised when someone who has achieved success is incredibly Machiavellian in their manipulations. So, while I want to believe it's integrity, that might just show how naïve I am. I sometimes worry that I might not be shrewd enough to maneuver myself through the Hollywood system.

It’s not getting the million that’s important, it’s what it makes of you to achieve becoming a MILLIONAIRE.

in Los Angeles ... was the thinking-est crowd on earth: how to get ahead, how to mold a better body, how to have a better relationship, how to score, earn, fight, win, get published, be a star.

Success only feeds the appetite of aggression.

America is a country where the Olympics and the divorce lawyers both have the same slogan - Go for the Gold.

Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators.

Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming or good-looking. They become rich and powerful by wanting to be rich and powerful.

Not sayin' I'm the richest man alive, but I'm in the game.

We are concerned with things. We are concerned with success. We are concerned with money. We are concerned with instrumentalities.

You’re only poor if you give up. The most important thing is that you did something. Most people only talk and dream of getting rich. You’ve done something.

It was left for the present age to endow Covetousness with glamour on a big scale, and to give it a title which it could carry like a flag. It occurred to somebody to call it Enterprise. From the moment of that happy inspiration, Covetousness has gone forward and never looked back.

We are unreasonably desirous to separate the goods of life from those evils which Providence has connected with them, and to catch advantages without paying the price at which they are offered to us. Every man wishes to be rich, but very few have the powers necessary to raise a sudden fortune, either by new discoveries, or by superiority of skill in any necessary employment; and among lower understandings many want the firmness and industry requisite to regular gain and gradual acquisitions.

If you are going to work hard anyway, you might as well get rich...and the quicker the better!

Always remember honey. A good motto is: Take all you can get and give as little as possible.