Joseph Conrad Quotes

The folly of men has enhanced the value of gold and silver because of their scarcity; whereas, on the contrary, it is their opinion that Nature, as an indulgent parent, has freely given us all the best things in great abundance, such as water and earth, but has laid up and hid from us the things that are vain and useless.

Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them.

Frankly, the only thing China has in easy abundance is people and dirty coal. Neither is the asset they're made out to be.

The materials of wealth are in the earth, in the seas, and in their natural and unaided productions.

Such forms of wealth as gold, silver, precious stones are only minerals and products having an exchange value. It is social effort, the search for profit and the use of tools that cause the increase or decrease of the quantity of precious metals in circulation and hence, the real wealth of a King

The soil of no country is rich enough to attain a great mass of wealth, merely by the exchange and exportation of its own natural product.

The building of the transcontinental railroads resulted in an orgy of political corruption. The public lands and the natural resources of coal, of iron, and of timber were lavishly wasted in the great scramble for wealth and material power. The carnival of waste and plunder reached its climax about 1890. Evidences were abundant that the great business interests of the country were controlling the government for their own private benefit. The capitalists who financed the railroads, mines, mills, packing houses, grain elevators, and other great enterprises, received from Congress favors which destroyed competition and enormously increased private fortunes.

The prosperity of a people depends upon such facts as the natural wealth of the country in which they live, their social discipline and industrial character, the result of generations, of centuries, it may be, of tradition.

We have more natural resources - coal, oil, wind - across the board not only to be energy independent but to be a leading exporter.

I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naïveté?

Everything which the economist takes from you in the way of life and humanity, he restores to you in the form of money and wealth.

Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.

I have said many times that I wish there was no oil in the Middle East, and more water. People would have been much happier than they are right now.

You want the people to know, but you don't really want the things behind it. I have everything I ever wanted. I never wanted a big house. I never wanted a Ferrari. I mean, as I proceeded with the music, I started liking Ferraris...

The national strike of the miners in 1972 performed, I believe, a great service, not only to the miners, but the people in Britain today who wanted coal.

My watch say I made it, my chains say I'm rich. Diamonds in my mouth got me talking cash s**t.

Welcome to my world! I've been through it all, and I often pinch myself to believe my luck. I design jewlery, create cosmetics, perform comedy, act, lecture, write books, travel, have a fabulous daughter, and a phenomenal grandson-and I feel I'm the luckiest woman on the planet.

With a few exceptions people don't want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.

Some people's measure of success is how much they can grab hold of and hold on to.

To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in terms of money, is not acceptable because it is not realistic. I am thinking as I believe we must think if we wish to discuss the best uses of people, places, and things, and if we wish to give affection some standing in our thoughts.

The dollar bill is God in the States. All those Pelican people just believe in money and nothing else.

We live in a world of breathtaking material plenty. That has freed hundreds of millions of people from day-to-day struggles and liberated us to pursue more significant desires: purpose, transcendence, and spiritual fulfillment.

People don't want to be millionaires - they want to experience what they believe only millions can buy.

And he dreamed the dream of all those who publish books, which was to have so much gold in your pockets that you would have to employ two people just to hold your trousers up.

You can easily find people who are ten times as rich at sixty as they were at twenty but not one of them will tell you that they are ten times as happy