Paul Samuelson Quotes

The difference between us and other people is that their money looks bigger and their troubles smaller.

Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.

Richness, the ideas of having plenty of money, is not ... an absolute state. Richness is about the amount of money you have compared to the people you see around you. It is about where you are in relation to others, and where they are in relation to you ... and whether you can have the things you want and other people have.

A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife's sister's husband.

In our minds, rich is always the other person, the other family. Rich is having more than you currently have. If that is the case, you can be rich and not feel it. You can be rich and not know it.

And living in Australia I am relatively well off.

My first job paid well for a young attorney. I was making over $50,000, which was more than either of my parents had ever made. I thought I was rich.

We were what you would call a poor family, but we were rich in so many things. We did family things together. We always had dessert, even if it was just Jell-O. So, I never knew I was poor.

I don't have as much money as Rahm Emanuel.

People would rather earn 60 grand in an area where their neighbours earn 40, than earn 80 in an area where their neighbours earn a hundred.

Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.

I feel affluent or not according to what part of town I am in.

People who are rich want to be richer, but what's the difference? The toys get different, that's all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It's all relative.

The middle class in the rich countries is where the political game is being played. They are voting in elections in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany. They are working people in the upper part of the global income distribution. They might on average be happy that the Chinese are doing well, but they are not happy that the Chinese are doing well relative to them.

You never can cure poverty. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder.

the art of becoming 'rich', in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbour shall have less. In accurate terms, it is 'the art of establishing the maximum inequality in your own favour'.

Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.

In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune, because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself.

Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.

Poverty is relative, and, therefor not ignoble.

I have had no real gratification or enjoyment of any sort more than my neighbour on the next block who is worth only half a million.

I was talking to Donna Karan at an event and she said, "You know, Ralph, I still don't feel rich."

Like it or not, to reach middle age with less money or less prestige than our father had is somewhat to lose face. Stupid of course, when put like that, but who is prepared to argue that we are not stupid in several important ways?

I have more money than God, but not as much as Oprah.