The Quotable Billionaire

Advice and Reflections From and For the Real, Former, Almost, and Wanna-Be Super-Rich . . . and Others

Steven D. Price

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781626366794
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Actions

What the super-rich and others have to say about money in these pages is sometimes enlightening, sometimes profound, often entertaining, and always revealing. Topics include wealth ("If you can actually count your money, then you are not really a rich man."—J. Paul Getty); investing ("Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for ten years."—Warren Buffett); success ("The secret of success is to do common things uncommonly well."—John D. Rockefeller); and leadership ("The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks."—Rupert Murdoch). In addition are proverbs, quips, and other commentary on all aspects of having a fortune.

1

WEALTH: IN THE ABSTRACT AND IN THE CONCRETE

Anyone can be a millionaire, but to become a billionaire you need an astrologer.

—J. P. Morgan

I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God.

—John D. Rockefeller

I’m not a paranoid deranged millionaire.
Goddammit, I’m a billionaire.

—Howard Hughes

If you can actually count your money, then you are not really a rich man.

—J. Paul Getty

There’s a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, regarding political candidate H. Ross Perot

Loco Dempsey: You don’t think he’s a little old?

Schatze Page: Wealthy men are never old.

—from the film How to Marry a Millionaire

It isn’t necessary to be rich and famous to be happy.
It’s only necessary to be rich.

—Alan Alda

In suggesting gifts, money is appropriate, and one size fits all.

—William Handolph Hearst

Fortune has something of the nature of a woman. If she is too intensely wooed, she commonly goes the further away.

—Charles V

A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.

—Ecclesiastes 10:19

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.

—Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth

The rich are not born sceptical or cynical.
They are made that way by events, circumstances.

—J. Paul Getty

Look at all the billionaires. If I know 15 billionaires, I know 13 unhappy people.

—Russell Simmons

Some people on the [Forbes] list are in their thirties and are worth at least $10 billion. But it’s good to be on the list.

—Ronald Lauder

I have been insane on the subject of moneymaking all my life.

—Cornelius Vanderbilt

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

—Warren Buffett

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

—John D. Rockefeller

If you’ve literally been worrying, “Will the money last until the end of the week?” you will never, ever complain about having money.

—J. K. Rowling

All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.

—Ray Kroc

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

—Andrew Carnegie

Money is like water. Block its flow and it will stagnate.

—Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum

Becoming wealthy is like playing Monopoly . . . the person who can accumulate the most assets wins the game.

—Noel Whittaker

Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws which govern its acquisition.

—George Clason

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have a million dollars in the stock market, because if I lose a million dollars, I don’t personally care.

—Suze Orman

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.

—the character Mr. Mikawber, in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield

Dollars have never been known to produce character, and character will never be produced by money.

—W. K. Kellogg

Money is just a way of keeping score.

—H. L. Hunt

A billion dollars isn’t what it used to be.

—Nelson Bunker Hunt

No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather.

—Michael Pritchard

Pola Debevoise: I want to marry Rockefeller.

Schatze Page: Which one?

Pola Debevoise: I don’t care.

—from the film How to Marry a Mi...