Jane Fonda Quotes

The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly human goal.

Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.

How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star?

Materialism is decadent and degenerate only if the spirit of the nation has withered and if individual people are so unimaginative that they wallow in it.

The more you pander to what is, presumably, the taste of young people, the more you corrupt.

Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore; Plain living and high thinking are no more.

The moral problem of our day is concerned with the love of money, with the habitual appeal to the money motive in nine-tenths of the activities of life…

Not everything in the United States is for sale.

A quarter of a century ago, we were crazy about politics. Now we are crazy about making money …. I am afraid that one day we will become money hooligans without culture.

No one seems to care for anything but about money today. Nothing is held of account except the bank accounts. Quality, education, civic distinction, public virtue seem each year to be valued less and less.

I don't believe the makeup of America is as solid as it was 40 years ago. Society has become more selfish and, as a result, less dedicated to the common good. Millions hail a culture that is now more concerned with money and appearances than with genuine accomplishment.

The selfish spirit of commerce which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.

…luxury is the result of wealth, or it makes wealth necessary. It corrupts both rich and poor, the one by possessing, the other by coveting. It sells out the fatherland to indolence and vanity; it deprives the State of all its Citizens by enslaving some of them to others and all of them to opinion.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Nobody seemed to be interested in anything except making money.

We must expect for a long time yet to see capitalists still striving to obtain the highest possible profits. But observe, that the passion for wealth is certainly in some senses new. It grew up very rapidly at the beginning of the present century; it was not so strong in the last century, when men were much more content to lead a quiet easy life of leisure. The change has really influenced the relations between men; but in the future it is quite possible that the scramble for wealth may grow less intense, and a change in the opposite direction take place.

I think the main focus in America is - is basically greed.

I think everything is a motive for money. Every thought, every belief, everything we're taught in school.

We live in a society that, for the most part, is morally and spiritually bankrupt. Our culture is a culture of consumerism. How sustainable is that?

This is the western world; if somebody can make a buck, they're going to try to do it.

We have been concentrating on the banks, business and our bellies. We have neglected the spiritual and cultural. It was because Rome and Athens neglected these things that they fell.

I think hard-core capitalism tends to commercialize everything.

I hate to say it - it breaks my heart - but we're a tacky, money-obsessed culture.

The difficulty with big cities does not lie in skyscrapers or high-rises per se; rather, it is the values concealed within those buildings which lead to the loss of our humanity and our sense of spiritual emptiness.

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, the signet of its all-enslaving power, upon a shining ore, and called it gold: before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud, the mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, and with blind feelings reverence the power that grinds them to the dust of misery.