Quotes & Sayings About Billionaires

The American people want to raise the minimum wage. Every poll tells us that. That bill will not get to the floor of the Senate. The American people want to ask the rich to pay more in taxes. But the legislation that will get to the floor is tax breaks for billionaires. — Bernie Sanders

Never before has anyone figured out how to rent out American foreign policy, how to convert the position of secretary of state into a personal money machine. Hillary, with Bill's help, figured out not only how to shake down Russian oligarchs and Canadian billionaires by offering them control of America's uranium assets; she also figured out how to rob the island nation of Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. It's one thing to rip off the world's rich; it takes a special kind of chutzpah to steal from the poorest of the poor. — Dinesh D'Souza

One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no "people" waiting for just such an appeal. Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get it. And the fact that kings and bishops and billionaires often have more say than most in forming appetites and emotions of the crowd is not irrelevant, either. — Christopher Hitchens

By this point in history - after the 2008 collapse of Wall Street and in the midst of layers of ecological crises - free market fundamentalists should, by all rights, be exiled to a similarly irrelevant status, left to fondle their copies of Milton Friedman's Free to Choose and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged in obscurity. They are saved from this ignominious fate only because their ideas about corporate liberation, no matter how demonstrably at war with reality, remain so profitable to the world's billionaires that they are kept fed and clothed in think tanks by the likes of Charles and David Koch, owners of the diversified dirty energy giant Koch Industries, and ExxonMobil. — Naomi Klein

trouble with moonwalkers and billionaires is when they arrive at the top, their momentum often stops. If they don't manage to find something to parlay, they turn into the kid on the jungle gym who just hangs from the ring. Not coincidentally, this is the same reason that only one-third of Americans are happy at their jobs. When there's no forward momentum in our careers, we get depressed, too. — Shane Snow

But such people (Moderate Conservatives) aren't liberal. What they are is corporate. Their habits and opinions owe far more to the standards of courtesy and taste that prevail within the white-collar world than they do to Franklin Roosevelt and the United Mine Workers. We live in a time, after all, when hard-nosed bosses compose awestruck disquisitions on the nature of 'change,' punk rockers dispense leadership secrets, shallow profundities about authenticity sell luxury cars, tech billionaires build rock'n'roll musuems, management theorists ponder the nature of coolness, and a former lyricist fro the Grateful Dead hail the dawn of New Economy capitalism from the heights of Davos. Coversvatives may not understand why, but business culture had melded with counterculture for reasons having a great deal to do with business culture's usual priority - profit. — Thomas Frank

Millionaires don't use astrology ... the billionaires do. — J. P. Morgan

I'm more interested in photographing people who have done something, like writers or directors - even billionaires - as long as I can study them before I photograph them. — Francesco Carrozzini

If knowing history made you rich, librarians would be billionaires. — Warren Buffett

We have a presidential nominee in Hillary Clinton who knows that, in a time of stunningly wide disparities of wealth in our nation, America's greatness must not be measured by how many millionaires and billionaires we have, but by how few people we have living in poverty. — Cory Booker

Introverts listen better, they assess risks more carefully, they can be wiser managers. It's not for nothing that the Silicon Valley billionaires are so often the retiring types. — Jeffrey Kluger

Meet Jake - He's illegally hot and his dirty-talking will make you dizzy!

Meet Hunter - He's outspoken, impulsive and a rugged piece of eye candy!

These Two Alpha Billionaires Believe In Sharing...Everything! — Scarlett Avery

We must reign in overspending by ridding government of outmoded programs, making Big Oil pay their fair share, repealing massive tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas, and enacting a tax code that no longer favors millionaires and billionaires. — Paul Tonko

I think what the American people are saying is enough is enough. This country, this great country, belongs to all of us. It cannot continue to be controlled by a handful of billionaires who apparently want it all. — Bernie Sanders

We see men and women who work as hard as they possibly can and still fall behind a little more every month. We see lives that look nothing like those lived by billionaires in eighteen-thousand-square-foot condos, because these people don't live in some fairy tale - they live in today's reality. * — Elizabeth Warren

I think the latest estimates were that we have about 250,000 millionaires and billionaires. President Obama wants to increase their taxes 13 percent. — Joe Walsh

If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we've got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship. — Barack Obama

In the bathroom, I studied my body, trying to see what he had seen. My hipbones were more prominent than I remembered, probably from all the days of being unable to eat after discovering Jonathan's betrayal. My thinness suddenly angered me. Why had I punished myself when it had been him that had been at fault? I should have pampered myself, nurtured my soul with my favourite foods and wine and spent time with friends instead of languishing at home and drowning myself in work. — Holly Stone

One may denounce corruption in the developing world and the developed world alike, but in the age when billionaires stalk a globe on which 50 percent of its people live on less than two dollars a day, can one really be surprised that customs officers, policemen, judges, politicians, and bureaucrats are often tempted? — Misha Glenny

Let's restore sanity and fairness to the tax cut conversation. We simply cannot afford to hand over the bank vault to our nation's millionaires and billionaires while the middle class picks up spare change. — Paul Tonko

If you like easygoing, monogamous men, stay away from billionaires. — Rita Rudner

All those predictions about how much economic growth will be created by this, all of those new jobs, would be created by the things we wanted - the extension of unemployment insurance and middle class tax cuts. An estate tax for millionaires adds exactly zero jobs. A tax cut for billionaires - virtually none. — Anthony Weiner

Billionaires' Indulgence is decadent, debauched and sinfully delicious. — Scarlett Avery

The superheroes you have in your mind (idols, icons, titans, billionaires, etc.) are nearly all walking flaws who've maximized 1 or 2 strengths. — Timothy Ferriss

I took Sin on faith, but if faith were money, fools would be billionaires. — Nina Malkin

It's harder now for journalists to do stories about billionaires, like Peter Thiel, without having at the back of their minds the fear that maybe somebody deep-pocketed, you know, with limited resources is going to come after us and can my organization afford to defend me? — Nick Denton

I'm a wealth creator. I'm not interested in saving in the least. While I do spend a lot, I don't spend money like other billionaires. I'm probably quite unusual, albeit I do have some of the significant trappings. But I always try to make my assets work for a living. — John Caudwell

If a Member of the Senate wants to look that veteran in the eyes and say to him or her that they think we cannot afford to help that individual who sacrificed so much for this country have a family, well go do that. Tell that individual that you think we cannot afford to help him or her, but when you do that, I hope you will also tell him why you voted to give $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent at a time when the wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well. Virtually all of my Republican colleagues thought it was appropriate to provide huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires. — Jonathan Tasini

Billionaires prefer Black women. They are loyal and guard your interests. Black wives are for grown ups. — Ben Horowitz

Look around. Oil companies guzzle down the billions in profits. Billionaires pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, and Wall Street CEOs, the same ones the direct our economy and destroyed millions of jobs still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them. Does anyone here have a problem with that? — Elizabeth Warren

Billionaires should never be responsible for solving problems, because they're not the government. — Bill Gates

If you wanted to control the nation's manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation and natural resources, you would need only to control the apex, the power pinnacle, of an all-powerful SOCIALIST government. Then you would have a monopoly and could squeeze out all your competitors. If you wanted a national monopoly, you must control a national socialist government. If you want a worldwide monopoly, you must control a world socialist government. That is what the game is all about. "Communism" is not a movement of the downtrodden masses but is a movement created, manipulated and used by power-seeking billionaires in order to gain control over the world ... — Gary Allen

A government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom, morality, and humanity. — Michael Moore

Capitalism is going to deal itself out of existence, but before it does that, you're gonna pay $50 for a latte, because inflation is going impoverish all of us before people get pissed off enough to realize that all of the last hundred years of economic progress was actually a shell game to create billionaires, while the great masses of people saw their standard of living eroded and destroyed. — Terence McKenna

Democracy can't be just for billionaires and corporations. — Hillary Clinton

I believe that the role of limited government should be looking after the needs of veterans, the elderly, children and those institutions that improve the quality of life for struggling families - I don't believe that government should bend to serve the needs of subsidized multi-national corporations and entitled billionaires. — Moby

Why have one alpha billionaire when you can have two? — Scarlett Avery

Millionaires don't use Astrology, billionaires do. — J. P. Morgan

Just ten of the Jewish billionaires on this Earth have more than enough to transform the occupied territories into heaven. We can put the 'pal' back in Palestinian. — Roseanne Barr

It appears the Kochs are among the most defensive billionaires, preferring the comfy confines of their callous and intellectually dishonest world view. — Robert Greenwald

Jews are estimated to be less than 1% of the world's population yet approximately 25% of the world's billionaires are Jewish. — H.W. Charles

Some billionaires like cars, yachts and private jets. Others like newspapers. — Andrew Ross Sorkin

Two Strapping Alpha Billionaires. One Girl Looking For A Fresh Start. A Heck of A Wild Ride! — Scarlett Avery

BEHIND THE BILLIONS 172 words After our annual ranking of the world's wealthiest was published, wealth reporter Chase Peterson-Withorn, who helped research and compile FORBES' 2015 Billionaires list, hopped on Reddit for an "Ask Me Anything" chat. MATADERO Has anyone on the Billionaires list attended community college or — Anonymous

What kind of nation are we when we give tax breaks to billionaires, but we can't take care of the elderly and the children. — Bernie Sanders

The smartest billionaires I know never finished high school. I got my degree and my doctorate on the street and an advanced degree in jail. — Tommy Chong

What does a political revolution look like? It means that 80 percent of the people vote in national elections, not 40 percent. It means that billionaires can't make unlimited campaign contributions and buy and sell politicians. It means that the U.S. government represents the needs of all the people, not just the 1 percent and their lobbyists. — Bernie Sanders

There is no reason that billionaires should crowd us out from our democracy. — Martin O'Malley

Professionalism in tennis ... only resulted in making billionaires out of rude children, producing an onslaught of moody defectors, and a lot of guys with hair that looks as if bats slept in it ... Meanwhile, my head swims with the thought that I have watched tennis progress from Don Budge and Alice Marble to Farrah Fawcett becoming John McEnroe's mother-in-law. — Dan Jenkins

For billionaires who cannot buy good press, there is the option of buying the press. — William Finnegan

Trust me... It's not called Wicked Pleasure for nothing. You won't be able to put it down once you start!!! — Scarlett Avery

If you're raised with a poverty mentality, nothing is going to change it. I do know some really stingy billionaires. I come from such a generation of hand-to-mouthers. — Robert Downey Jr.

What has become clear to many Americans is that the electoral system is bankrupt. As the political process becomes more privatized, outsourced, and overrun with money from corporations and billionaires, a wounded republic is on its death bed, gasping for life. — Henry Giroux

We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics... — Thomas Piketty

American families cannot compete with billionaires. Our involvement in government should not be dependent on our bank account balances — Harry Reid

Technologically we now have four [seven!] billion billionaires on board Spaceship Earth who are entirely unaware of their good fortune. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Billionaires like the Koch brothers, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and political puppet master Karl Rove should not be able to buy our elections. Secret money should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people and sell our Democracy to the highest bidder. — Hank Johnson

Despite Marc Andreessen's and Peter Thiel's belief that the outsize gains of tech billionaires are the result of a genius entrepreneur culture, inequality at this scale is a choice - the result of the laws and taxes that we as a society choose to establish. — Jonathan Taplin

I don't know any real billionaires. — William Kent Krueger

Billionaires Indulgence is outrageously hot, salaciously addicting, sexy as hell, and you'll enjoy every single page!!! — Scarlett Avery

The economy that leads the world will be the one with the most millionaires and billionaires. — James Cook

The big guys like Google weren't always big. Once they were two kids in a garage. Or a dorm room. Some of them set out to be billionaires from the get-go, but some of them didn't. Some of them got just caught up in solving an interesting problem, which happened to be worth billions later. — Lee Child

I find the fact that billionaires are quoted as if the fact that they are billionaires gives them some kind of wisdom is outrageous. — Ben Elton

It doesn't matter who you vote for. It's still the same billionaires that run the world. — Geezer Butler

If I could set a world record, it would be that I have 150 business partners, all with thriving businesses of their own that started with nothing and I made the difference to make them all billionaires. — Barbara Corcoran

Gabrielle and Elaine seemed to hit it off by talking books - something trending about a very young billionaire and his obsession with an even younger woman ... and sex. Lots of erotic sex scenes in the book like apparently on every page ... Who has time? Why even read about sex in a book when you can have it instead? I don't get that. And billionaires in their twenties? I mentally shook my head and pretended to care. I'm such a bastard. — Raine Miller

When you look at Mark Zuckerberg and Snapchat and all these twentysomething billionaires, it's really kind of fascinating; a classic tale of the haves and have-nots. — Steven Bochco

As a parent and a citizen, I'll take a Bill Gates (or Warren Buffett) over Steve Jobs every time. If we must have billionaires, better they should ignore Jobs's example and instead embrace the morality and wisdom of the great industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. — Eric Alterman

During the financial crisis and bailouts of 2008, it probably occurred to very few average people that we were entering a period of hardship for billionaires. — Thomas Frank

The mistake the apartheid government made was they gave the black people nothing, so they had nothing to lose. But now a lot of the former freedom-fighters are big-time capitalists. They've been given directorships in every major company. They're billionaires! — Wilbur Smith

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have their 'Giving Pledge,' where billionaires promise to give away the majority of their wealth when they die. My Social Security Pledge is better - to give money to good causes when you are alive. Besides, more Americans can participate. — Mark Skousen

There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor, hungry, uneducated and without health coverage. — Marian Wright Edelman

Squandering time is a luxury of profligate youth, when the years are to us as dollars are to billionaires. Doing the same thing in middle age just makes you nervous, not with vague puritan guilt but the more urgent worry that you're running out of time, a deadline you can feel in your cells. — Tim Kreider

At least in the United States, most economic resentment is not directed toward billionaires or high-roller financiers - not even corrupt ones. It's directed at the guy down the hall who got a bigger raise. It's directed at the husband of your wife's sister, because he earns 20 percent more than you do. — Tyler Cowen

I want millionaires and billionaires and Big Oil companies to pay their fair share. — Elizabeth Warren

Regardless of the overall state of the economy, there is now a large enough elite made up of new multi-millionaires and billionaires for Wall Street to see the group as "superconsumers," able to carry consumer demand all on their own. — Naomi Klein

I am upset and completely disappointed in the government, the millionaires and billionaires in the U.S. See what's happening to the country? Look at all the health problems, the economy, the recession and crime. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

We need to expand Social Security to prevent the looming retirement crisis, and we can do it simply by asking billionaires to pay their fair share. — Robert Reich

As of early 2016, the sixty-two richest people in the world were worth as much as the poorest 3.6 billion people! Since the world's population is about 7.2 billion, it means that these sixty-two billionaires together hold as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humankind.37 The — Yuval Noah Harari

As a former lifelong Republican, it pains me to tell you that today's Republicans - and their standard-bearers, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan - just aren't up to the task. They're beholden to 'my way or the highway' bullies, indebted to billionaires who bankroll ads and allergic to the very idea of compromise. — Charlie Crist

The middle class should not continue to foot the bill for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. — Keith Ellison

You've worked hard all your life. You've paid Medicare taxes for almost 30 years. But under the Republican plan, Medicare won't be there for you. Instead of Medicare as it exists now, under the Republican plan you'll get a voucher that will pay as little as half your Medicare costs when you turn 65 - and as little as a quarter in your 80s. And all so that millionaires and billionaires can have a huge tax cut. — David Frum

The rich people are apparently leaving America. They're giving up their citizenship. These great lovers of America who made their money in this country-when you ask them to pay their fair share of taxes they run abroad. We have 19-year old kids who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan defending this country. They went abroad. Not to escape taxes. They're working class kids who died in wars and now billionaires want to run abroad to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. What patriotism! What love of country! — Bernie Sanders

Rob left a note in the Manuscript, stating that once the formula was perceived and defined, it could be used in many ways, including winning millions of dollars from a bunch of billionaires. — J.M.K. Walkow

to Billionaires' Quay in Port Vauban for this impromptu meeting — Camille Aubray

One day about 10 years ago the door to my office opened and who walked in but Bill Gates ... Seemed like a nice guy and has done more with his money than most billionaires. But that's as far as I want to go being kind to Bill Gates. — Andy Rooney

Today, you've got hedge fund billionaires aligned with Karl Rove, running ads against me to try to get Democrats to vote for you [Bernie Sanders]. I know this game. I'm going to stop this game. — Hillary Clinton

Politically, as a result of Citizens United, billionaires are now able to spend as much money as they want on campaigns, which means that you have a political system which is heavily dominated by corporations and wealthy individuals. — Bernie Sanders

Did we ever plan on being billionaires? No, but we wanted to be millionaires. — Diane Hendricks

We would be billionaires, but we took responsibility for Summa's failure. — Edwin Soeryadjaya

How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us. — Ursula K. Le Guin

There are a lot of billionaires in Silicon Valley, but in the end, we are all heading to the same place. If given the choice between making a lot of money or finding a way to make people live longer, what do you choose? — Bill Maris

It matters whether the government blows tens of billions of dollars on tax loopholes for billionaires or whether that same money is used to lower costs for students who have to borrow money to go to college. It matters whether Wall Street can pocket billions of dollars by cheating people on mortgages and tricking them on credit cards or if there's a cop on the beat to keep them honest. It matters whether the minimum wage is set so low that a full-time worker still lives in poverty or if minimum wage also means a livable wage. When — Elizabeth Warren

What's happening is, there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out. So the people who get to use the money first which is created by the Federal Reserve system benefit. So the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street. That's why you have more billionaires than ever before. — Ron Paul

The Billionaires' Indulgence series is addicting and a heck of a wild ride! — Scarlett Avery

The billionaires pay an effective tax rate lower than nurses or truck drivers. That makes no sense at all. There has to be real tax reform, and the wealthiest and large corporations will pay. — Bernie Sanders

It is hard to sell Congress and the American people on foreign aid. Is it harder to do that than it is to sell billionaires on the idea that they should give all their money away. — Bill Gates

There are people who are genuinely upset in the Tea Party. I understand that. But that movement was funded with seed money from right-wing billionaires, the Koch brothers, and promoted on Fox News, and turned into a stocking horse for the right-wing agenda that a lot of people have been trying to push on the country for a long time. — Al Gore

Wall Street billionaires are predicting that Roosevelt-style railroad rate regulation will sooner or later bring about financial catastrophe. [ca. 1906] — Edmund Morris

As you may know, I'm the co-founder and co-chairman of an asteroid company called Planetary Resources that is backed by a group of eight billionaires to implement the bold mission of extracting resources from near-Earth asteroids. — Peter Diamandis