Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
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Les Enfants Terribles translation by Rosamond Lehmann (1929).Jean Cocteau
The second corruption of the state is oligarchy (oligos = few), in which the military elite is narrowed down to a few ruling families of immense wealth and prestige, who now openly flaunt their wealth and possessions.
Pierre Stephen Robert Payne
There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.
Arthur Schopenhauer
To crave wealth and honor, to demand power, to pile up riches, to gather all those vanities which seem to make for pomp and empty display, that is our furious passion and our unbounded desire.
On the other hand, we fear and abhor poverty, obscurity, and humility, and we seek to avoid them by all possible means.John Calvin
If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.
Denis Diderot
"The federal poverty measurement ... hasn't been changed since it was first introduced in 1964. ... [T]he formula [doesn't] indicate that we've made any gains in fighting poverty. ... [Yet] we have made real progress in fighting poverty and raising living standards since the 70s. ... The poverty formula ... is bankrupt."
Michael Bloomberg
Cocteau, Jean
Codd, E. F.
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