Bernard Lietaer

Bernard Lietaer Quote – While economic textbooks claim that …

While economic textbooks claim that people and corporations are competing for markets and resources, I claim that in reality they are competing for money – using markets and resources to do so. So designing new money systems really amounts to redesigning the target that orients much human effort.

Furthermore, I believe that greed and competition are not a result of immutable human temperament; I have come to the conclusion that greed and fear of scarcity are in fact being continuously created and amplified as a direct result of the kind of money we are using.

For example, we can produce more than enough food to feed everybody, and there is definitely enough work for everybody in the world, but there is clearly not enough money to pay for it all. The scarcity is in our national currencies. In fact, the job of central banks is to create and maintain that currency scarcity. The direct consequence is that we have to fight with each other in order to survive.

- Bernard Lietaer1

  1. Beyond Greed and Scarcity in Yes! Magazine, Summer 1997 []

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett Quote – It’s easier to create money …

It’s easier to create money than to spend it.

- Warren Buffet1

  1. Linda Grant, “Striking Out at Wall Street,” U.S. News & World Report, June 20, 1994, p. 58 []

John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes Quote – When the accumulation of wealth …

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease … But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.

- John Maynard Keynes1

  1. “The Future”, Essays in Persuasion (1931) Ch. 5, JMK, CW, IX, pp.329 – 331, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930); as quoted in “Keynes and the Ethics of Capitalism” by Robert Skidelsy []

Gwen Stefani

Music Quote – Gwen Stefani ft. Eve – Rich Girls

If I was a Rich Girl
Na [x15]
See, I’d have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl
No man could test me, impress me, my cash flow would never ever end
Cause I’d have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl

Think what that money could bring
I’d buy everything
Clean out Vivienne Westwood
In my Galliano gown
No, wouldn’t just have one hood
A Hollywood mansion if I could
Please book me first class to my fancy house in London town

All the riches baby, won’t mean anything
All the riches baby, bring what your love can bring
All the riches baby, won’t mean anything
Don’t need no other baby
Your lovin’ is better than gold and I know

If I was rich girl (na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na nah)
See, I’d have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl
No man could test me, impress me, my cash flow would never ever end
Cause I’d have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl
I’d get me four Harajuku girls to
Inspire me and they’d come to my rescue
I’d dress them wicked, I’d give them names
Love, Angel, Music, Baby
Hurry up and come and save me

All the riches baby, won’t mean anything
All the riches baby, bring what your love can bring
All the riches baby, won’t mean anything
Don’t need no other baby
Your lovin’ is better than gold and I know

[EVE:]
Come together all over the world
From the hoods of japan Harajuku girls
What? It’s all love
What? Give it up
What?
(shouldn’t matter) [x4]
What?
Come together all over the world
From the hoods of japan Harajuku girls
What? It’s all the love
What? Give it up
What? (shouldn’t matter)
What happened to my life? Turned up side down
Chicks that blew ya mind, ding, it’s the second round
Original track ending
You know you can’t buy these things
See Stefani and her L.A.M.B I rock the fetish people you know who I am

[Eve and Stefani:]
Yes ma’am, we got the style that’s wicked
I hope you can all keep up
We climbed all the way from the bottom to the top
now we ain’t gettin’ nothing but love

If I was rich girl (na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na nah)
See, I’d have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl
No man could test me, impress me, my cash flow would never ever end
Cause I’d have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin Quote – Remember that time is money.

Remember, that time is money.  He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but six pence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.

- Benjamin Franklin1

  1. Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748) []

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett Quote – To swim a fast 100 meters …

To swim a fast 100 meters, it’s better to swim with the tide than to work on your stroke.

- Warren Buffett1

  1. Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Omaha, 1991 []

Fiddler on the Roof

Music Quote – Fiddler on The Roof – If I Were a Rich Man

Dear God, you made many, many poor people.
I realize, of course, that it’s no shame to be poor.
But it’s no great honor either!
So, what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?”

If I were a rich man,
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I’d biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn’t have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I were a biddy biddy rich,
Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.

I’d build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen,
Right in the middle of the town.
A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below.
There would be one long staircase just going up,
And one even longer coming down,
And one more leading nowhere, just for show.

I’d fill my yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks
For the town to see and hear.
(Insert)Squawking just as noisily as they can. (End Insert)
With each loud “cheep” “swaqwk” “honk” “quack”
Would land like a trumpet on the ear,
As if to say “Here lives a wealthy man.”

If I were a rich man,
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I’d biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn’t have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I were a biddy biddy rich,
Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.

I see my wife, my Golde, looking like a rich man’s wife
With a proper double-chin.
Supervising meals to her heart’s delight.
I see her putting on airs and strutting like a peacock.
Oy, what a happy mood she’s in.
Screaming at the servants, day and night.

The most important men in town would come to fawn on me!
They would ask me to advise them,
Like a Solomon the Wise.
“If you please, Reb Tevye…”
“Pardon me, Reb Tevye…”
Posing problems that would cross a rabbi’s eyes!

And it won’t make one bit of difference if i answer right or wrong.
When you’re rich, they think you really know!

If I were rich, I’d have the time that I lack
To sit in the synagogue and pray.
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall.
And I’d discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day.
That would be the sweetest thing of all.

If I were a rich man,
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I’d biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.
I wouldn’t have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.

Lord who mad the lion and the lamb,
You decreed I should be what I am.
Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?
If I were a wealthy man.

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett Quote – Chains of habit are too …

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

- Warren Buffet1

  1. “Warren Buffet Talks Business, PBSTV program produced by the University of North Carolina, Center for Public Television, Chapel Hill, 1995 []

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett Quote – I don’t try to jump …

I don’t try to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

- Warren Buffett1

  1. L.J. Davis, “Buffet Takes Stocks,” The New York Times Magazine, April 1, 1990, p. 16 []

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin Quote – I think the best way …

I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

- Benjamin Franklin1

  1. On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor (1766-11-29) []