idle rich Quotes

We see that the richest property owners ... are precisely those who work the least or who do not work at all.

When the idle poor become the idle rich, you'll never know just who is who, or which is which.

The streets were full of insane & dull people. Most of them lived in nice houses and didn't seem to work, and you wondered how they did it.

The much-maligned idle rich have received a bad rap: They have maintained their wealth while many There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it. Andrew Carnegie of the energetic rich, aggressive real estate operators, corporate acquirers, oil drillers, etc. have their fortunes disappear.

I'd hate to see any descendants of mine fall into the category of what I'd call 'idle rich' - a group I've never had much use for.

… hundreds of gentlemen standing there with no other occupation than shaking the dust from their cigars.

Why should the wealth of the country be stored in banks and elevators while the idle workman wanders homeless about the streets and the idle loafers who hoard the gold only to spend it on riotous living are rolling about in fine carriages from which they look out on peaceful meetings and call them riots?

The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.

…those are called gentlemen who live idly in abundance from the returns of their possessions without having any care either for cultivation or for other necessary trouble in living. Such are pernicious in every republic and in every province, but more pernicious are those who, beyond the aforesaid fortunes, command from a castle and have subjects to obey them.

There's nothing undignified about lying about all day and being waited on by servants, sipping bloody champagne.

I think that being part of privilege and never having to work a day in your life is so boring. I'm so glad of what I've achieved. I'm so glad I've achieved it as well.

High society is for those who have stopped working and no longer have anything important to do.

The aristocracy are not the farmers who work the land, and raise the produce, but are the mere consumers of the rent; and when compared with the active world, are the drones, a seraglio of males, who neither collect the honey nor form the hive, but exist only for lazy enjoyment.

After visiting several of America's most fashionable playgrounds, I have reached the conclusion that men who work hard enjoy life most. The men at such places can be divided into two classes, first, busy men of affairs ... and, second, rich loafers. I was impressed by the obvious enjoyment corporation heads and other important executives were deriving from their vacation activities.... The idle rich fellows, on the other hand, although indulging in exactly the same activities, palpably were bored.

Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economising

Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them.

There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort... The need of work is in me.

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody rich, who feed their own egos by bankrolling political crusades on the left which hurt the very people that the left claims to care about -- working people, minorities, and children.

The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge about town, visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble than that of collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted slave society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how the capitalists in free society are to put to work. The master labors for the slave, they exchange industrial value. But the capitalist, living on his income, gives nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere exploitations.