Great Fortunes Quotes & Sayings

Too many people are frightened. They want youth to last. They complain bitterly if sickness comes. But the world is always in tumult, and fortunes rise and fall and fail. It is the ambitious who accomplish things. It takes courage to be ambitious, for never was anything great achieved without risk. — Jeff Wheeler

Let us remember, when we are inclined to be disheartened, that the private soldier is a poor judge of the fortunes of a great battle. — William Ralph Inge

She told fortunes for a living. It's a wacky book and was great fun to write. It is very much a look at what life was like for women in Australia in the 1960's. — Colleen McCullough

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. — Henry George

If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare. — Denis Diderot

If the heart of Africa remained elusive, my search for it had brought me closer to understanding myself and other human beings. The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and dangerous capers. We amass great fortunes at the cost of our souls, or risk our lives in drug dens from London's Soho, to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury. We shout in Baptist churches, wear yarmulkes and wigs and argue even the tiniest points in the Torah, or worship the sun and refuse to kill cows for the starving. Hoping that by doing these things, home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will forget our awful yearning for it. — Maya Angelou

She then had one of those sudden inspirations which only people of genius receive in great crises, in supreme moments which are to decide their fortunes or their lives. — Alexandre Dumas

If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains. Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent. God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried. — Niccolo Machiavelli

business men accumulate great fortunes, by giving before they try to get. — Napoleon Hill

God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure! — Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

Patriotism depends as much on mutual suffering as on mutual success; and it is by that experience of all fortunes and all feelings that a great national character is created. — Benjamin Disraeli

Words provide a voice to our deepest feelings. I tell you, words have started and stopped wars. Words have built and lost fortunes. Words have saved and taken lives. Words have won and lost great kingdoms. Even Buddha said, 'Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care, for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill. — Camron Wright

Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. — Andrew Carnegie

We see men who have accumulated great fortunes, but we often recognize only their triumph, overlooking the temporary defeats which they had to surmount before arriving. — Napoleon Hill

In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbors. — Benjamin Disraeli

One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes. — George MacDonald

Most great fortunes are built slowly. They are based on the principle of compound interest, what Albert Einstein called, "The greatest power in the universe." — Brian Tracy

Many have been ruined by their fortunes, and many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it the great have become little, and the little great. — Johann Georg Zimmermann

How do you think that the great fortunes and colonies have been made? By theft, war, and conquest."

"Then morality does not exist?"

"No," Dr. Marcel Andre Henri Felix Petiot answered, "it is the law of the jungle, always. Morality has been created for those who possess so that you do not retake the things gained from their own rapines. — David King

When you delve deep enough, you find that practically every great fortune and great enterprise in America have sprung from the courageous enterprise of some individual. It was Commodore Vanderbilt's enterprise in switching first from running a ferryboat to running other ships, and then, when he was well along in years, his enterprise in switching into railroading, that created what was to become one of the most notable fortunes in the history of the world. — B.C. Forbes

With a novelist's sense of drama and a historian's understanding of the social forces that shape our lives, Tom Gjelten has captured vividly
through the chronicle of a powerful family's fortunes
one of the great political dramas of our time. — Ronald Steel

A lot of great fortunes in the world have been made by owning a single wonderful business. If you understand the business, you don't need to own very many of them. — Warren Buffett

Fear not, Cesario, take thy fortunes up. Be that thou know'st thou art and then thou art as great as that thou fear'st. — William Shakespeare

There is in the world today a great and mysterious force that shapes the fortunes of millions of people. It is called the stock market. — Robert Wright

Bargains are the holy grail of the true stockpicker. The fact that 10 to 30 percent of our net worth is lost in a market sell-off is of little consequence. We see the latest correction not as a disaster but as an opportunity to acquire more shares at low prices. This is how great fortunes are made over time. — Peter Lynch

It was against this backdrop that the great fortunes were made, fortunes which allowed the first families to dominate the society of that era. Theodore Parker, a crusading minister in the 1840s, wrote of the Lowells and these other great families: "This class is the controlling one in politics. It mainly enacts the laws of this state and the nation; makes them serve its turn ... It can manufacture governors, senators, judges to suit its purposes as easily as it can manufacture cotton cloth. This class owns the machinery of society ... ships, factories, shops, water privileges." They were also families which had a fine sense of protecting their own position, and they were notorious for giving large grants to Harvard College, which was their college, and just as notorious for doing very little for public education. — David Halberstam

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class. — Alexis De Tocqueville

If you are blessed with great fortunes ... you may love your fate. But your fate never guarantees the security of those great fortunes. As soon as you realize your helplessness at the mercy of your fate, you are again in despair. Thus the hatred of fate can be generated not only by misfortunes, but also by great fortunes. Your hatred of fate is at the same time your hatred of your self. You hate your self for being so helpless under the crushing power of fate. — T. K. Seung

When the houses of the great collapse
Many little people are slain.
Those who have no share in the fortunes of the mighty
Often have a share in their misfortunes. The plunging
wain
Drags the sweating beasts with it into the abyss. — Bertolt Brecht

Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. — John Stuart Mill

We have all heard a great deal about the opportunities of bygone years. We envy the men who discovered and settled the West. We wish that all the railroads were not built so that those opportunities would still be open. Why, the opportunities of yesterday are as nothing compared with the opportunities that await the courageous, resourceful man today! There are fortunes to be made that will make those of Astor and Rockefeller seem picayune. — F.C. Minaker

My father, John Steinbeck, was a man who held human history in great reverence, and in particular the biographies of those people who had risked their lives, their fortunes, and their worldly honor to defend the rights and prerogatives of those who were powerless to defend themselves. — Thomas Steinbeck

America had been a boom-and-bust economy going into the Great Depression - just over and over and over, fortunes were wiped out, ordinary families were crushed under it. — Elizabeth Warren

The majority of the great fortunes were "won not by doing evil, but as an incident to action which has benefited the community as a whole. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Like so many great American fortunes, the Rosewater pile was accumulated in the beginning by a humorless, constipated Christian farm boy turned speculator and briber during and after the Civil War. — Kurt Vonnegut

Man's greatest motivating force is his desire to please woman! The hunter who excelled during prehistoric days, before the dawn of civilization, did so, because of his desire to appear great in the eyes of woman. Man's nature has not changed in this respect. The "hunter" of today brings home no skins of wild animals, but he indicates his desire for her favor by supplying fine clothes, motor cars, and wealth. Man has the same desire to please woman that he had before the dawn of civilization. The only thing that has changed, is his method of pleasing. Men who accumulate large fortunes, and attain to great heights of power and fame, do so, mainly, to satisfy their desire to please women. — Napoleon Hill

Almost all great fortunes are based upon one cracking good idea and the guts to go with it — Frederick Forsyth

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done. — Honore De Balzac

The great fortunes of our day have rarely been accumulated through the sale of the most meaningful items and services, such as poetry or relationship counselling. — Alain De Botton

I believe with great fortunes come great responsibility, so with our family's assets and many wealthy friends, we could help raise a lot of money to help others. — Eric Trump

I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than not, on the blood of poor people, black people, Indian people. They were the ones who paid very dearly for those great fortunes. — Peter Matthiessen

Men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind. — John Locke

The story is that while a child named Servius Tullius lay sleeping, his head burst into flames in the sight of many. The general outcry which so great a miracle called forth brought the king and queen to the place. One of the servants fetched water to quench the fire, but was checked by the queen, who stilled the uproar and commanded that the boy should not be disturbed until he awoke of himself. Soon afterwards sleep left him, and with it disappeared the flames. Then, talking her husband aside, Tanaquil Said: 'Do you see this child whom we are bringing up in so humble a fashion? Be assured he will one day be a lamp to our dubious fortunes, and a protector to the royal house in the day of its distress. Let us therefore rear with all solicitude one who will lend high renowen to the state and to our family.' It is said that from that moment the boy began to be looked upon as a son, and to be trained in the studies by which men are inspired to bear themselves greatly. — Livy

One must realize that all who have accumulated great fortunes first did a certain amount of dreaming, hoping, wishing, desiring, and planning before they acquired money. — Napoleon Hill

The great personal fortunes in the country weren't built on a portfolio of fifty companies. They were built by someone who identified one wonderful business. With each investment you make, you should have the courage and the conviction to place at least 10% of your net worth in that stock. — Warren Buffett

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now when great fortunes are only made by business: Business is war! — Christian Nestell Bovee

An aristocracy come to power, convinced of its own disinterested quality, believing itself above both petty partisan interest and material greed. The suggestion that this also meant the holding and wielding of power was judged offensive by these same people, who preferred to view their role as service, though in fact this was typical of an era when many of the great rich families withdrew from the new restless grab for money of a modernizing America, and having already made their particular fortunes, turned to the public arena as a means of exercising power. They were viewed as reformers, though the reforms would be aimed more at the newer seekers of wealth than at those who already held it. ("First-generation millionaires," Garry Wills wrote in Nixon Agonistes, "give us libraries, second-generation millionaires give us themselves.") — David Halberstam