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Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master.

— P. T. Barnum Art of Money Getting (1880)

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More quotes by P. T. Barnum

The desire for wealth is nearly universal, and none can say it is not laudable, provided the possessor of it accepts its responsibilities, and uses it as a friend to humanity.

Art of Money Getting (1880)

Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business.

Art of Money Getting (1880)

In fact, as a general thing, money-getters are the benefactors of our race.

Art of Money Getting (1880)

The plan of "counting the chickens before they are hatched" is an error of ancient date, but it does not seem to improve by age.

Art of Money Getting (1880)

I am a showman by profession...and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me.

P. T. Barnum: America's Greatest Showman (1995)

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Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.

Gautama Buddha

Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.

Jerome The Cry for Justice (1915)

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Max Horkheimer Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: P. T. Barnum (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.