Thoughts on wealth

American publisher and author

We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.

—Louis D Brandeis

American lawyer

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

—Henry David Thoreau

American naturalist

Contentment is the only real wealth.

—Alfred Nobel

Swedish inventor

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

—Edmund Burke

Irish statesman

Wealth and compassion are opposites.

—Munshi Premchand

Author

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

—George Bernard Shaw

Irish playwright

How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else?

—Tony Judt

British-American historian

It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

—Kin Hubbard

American humourist

I strongly believe that those of us who are privileged to have wealth should contribute significantly to try and create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged.

—Azim Premji

Entrepreneur