Deb Caletti Quotes

There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.

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.

Water does tend to flow up hill toward money and power.

However widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed, no general increase of the community's wealth can make any approach to satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of every one to excel everyone else in the accumulation of goods.

Consumerism is, quite precisely, the consuming of life by the things consumed. It is living in a manner that is measured by having rather than being... and consumerism is hardly the sin of the rich. The poor, driven by discontent and envy, may be as consumed by what they do not have as the rich are consumed by what they do have. The question is not, certainly not most importantly, a question about economics. It is first and foremost a cultural and moral problem requiring a cultural and moral remedy.

What do you think it is that drives people to want far more than they could ever use or need? I frankly think it's insecurity. How do we let the world know that the trappings of this life are not the things that are ultimately important for being accepted?

The man who worships mere wealth is a snob.

This America has been the country of greed rather than the country of need.

There's nothing wrong with being a capitalistic society, but it's taken the place of faith.

America's critics can be heard everywhere. It is too much in love with money - worshipping the god of the marketplace, the golden calf. It has too much money, seven of the top 10 banks, eight of the top 10 companies etc. It is too stingy, giving away less of its wealth than other countries. It is vulgar, a rich barbarian.

Hollywood is so fake and people need to realize that people are just people, and you, too, don't need to be born into something or have money or have whatever product someone is hawking on you.

I was the child at school in second-hand or handmade clothes and, as I grew older, I craved material wealth, a big house and designer clothes.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

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.

Materialism has never been so ominous as now in North America, as management takes over.

Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.

An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed.

I know why they don't like me because they want the money I have.

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

The trappings of lifestyle are often that; traps.

The man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.

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.

We judge of entire nations by the productions of a few mechanical arts, and think we are talking of men, while we are boasting of their estates, their dress, and their palaces. The sense in which we apply the terms, great, and noble, high rank, and high life, show, that we have, on such occasions, transferred the idea of perfection from the character to the equipage; and that excellence itself is, in our esteem, a mere pageant, adorned at a great expense, by the labors of many workmen.

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

Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man.