The 100 Best Money Quotes of All Time

Some products in this article are from our partners. Read our Advertiser Discloser.

money quotes

There is something about quotes that motivates me to be a better person. Especially when they are relevant to me and where I am in life.

Since I blog about personal finance and it is a huge part of what I do, I decided to share my favorite money quotes.

Here is a list of the best quotes about money that I have ever heard:

1. “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” – Will Smith

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like

2. “You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.” – Maya Angelou

3. ”Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.” – Benjamin Franklin

4. “A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.” – Jonathan Swift

5. “Money and women are the most sought after and the least known about of any two things we have.” – Will Rogers

6. ”Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.” – Nelson Mandela

7. “Money is usually attracted, not pursued.” – Jim Rohn

8. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison

9. “If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.” – Earl Wilson

10. “Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.” – James W. Frick

Related Article: Thirty Things I Learned Before 30

11. “Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.” – Warren Buffett

12. “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin

13. “If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.” – Billy Graham

14. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. – Seneca

15. “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” – Norman Vincent Peale

16. “Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.” – Erich Fromm

17. “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” – Henry Ford

18. “If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice of how he acts when he loses money.” – Simone Weil

19. “Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder.” – George Washington

20. “Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.” – Gandhi

21. “When it comes to money, you can’t win. If you focus on making it, you’re materialistic. If you try to but don’t make any, you’re a loser. If you make a lot and keep it, you’re a miser. If you make it and spend it, you’re a spendthrift. If you don’t care about making it, you’re unambitious. If you make a lot and still have it when you die, you’re a fool–for trying to take it with you. The only way to really win with money is to hold it loosely–and be generous with it to accomplish things of value.” – John C. Maxwell

22. “Never spend your money before you have earned it.” – Thomas Jefferson

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

23. “Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more.” – Mark Twain

24. “Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks–it says, “Goodbye.” – Frank Sinatra

25. “My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.” – Steve Jobs

26. “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”  Jim Rohn

27. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.” Charles Dickens

28. “I love money. I love everything about it. I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater. And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.” – Steve Martin

29. “If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.” – Henry Ford

30. “You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.”  Dave Ramsey

31. “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.” – Donald Trump

32. “The trick is to stop thinking of it as ‘your’ money.”  IRS auditor

33. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill

34. The Stock Market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient.”  Warren Buffett

35. “Dogs have no money. Isn’t that amazing? They’re broke their entire lives. But they get through. You know why dogs have no money? .. No Pockets.”  Jerry Seinfeld

36. “My formula for success is rise early, work late and strike oil.”  JP Getty

37. “Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it insures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises.”  Aristotle

38. “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”  Ayn Rand

39. “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”  Pablo Picasso

40. “When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.”  Oscar Wilde

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is

41. “If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.”  John Bogle

42. “Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W’s you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it.” – Tim Ferriss

43. “Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.”  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

44. “If you took our top fifteen decisions out, we’d have a pretty average record. It wasn’t hyperactivity, but a hell of a lot of patience. You stuck to your principles and when opportunities came along, you pounced on them with vigor.” Charlie Munger

45. “The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind.”  T.T. Munger

46. “The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your back pocket.”  Will Rogers

47. “It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.” – George Lorimer

48. “A simple fact that is hard to learn is that the time to save money is when you have some.”  Joe Moore

49. “Money can’t buy happiness, but it will certainly get you a better class of memories.”  Ronald Reagan

50. “What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.”  Seneca

Related: 50 Best Business Quotes of All Time

51. “Many folks think they aren’t good at earning money, when what they don’t know is how to use it.”  Frank A. Clark

52. “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin

53. “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.”  P.T. Barnum

54. “Try to save something while your salary is small; it’s impossible to save after you begin to earn more.”  Jack Benny

55. “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” — Henry David Thoreau

56. “The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.” — Ben Graham

57. “Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas. — Paul Samuelson

58. “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” — Thomas Jefferson

59. “It’s easier to feel a little more spiritual with a couple of bucks in your pocket.”― Craig Ferguson

60. “Every time you borrow money, you’re robbing your future self.” — Nathan W. Morris

61. “The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.” — Philip Fisher

62. “Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.” — Benjamin Franklin

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

63. “Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we’ve got 24 hours each.” — Christopher Rice

64. “I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.” — Warren Buffett

Related article: 14 Best Movies About Wall Street

65. “Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.” — Zig Ziglar

66. “Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.” — Benjamin Franklin

67. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” — Jim Rohn

68. “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

69. “Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That’s not just a catchy slogan. It’s the very essence of successful investing.” — J. Paul Getty

70. “How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.” — Robert G. Allen

71. “I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.” — Malcolm Forbes

72. “Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.” — Jackie Mason

73. “The more you learn, the more you earn.” — Frank Clark

74. “Put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.” — Andrew Carnegie

75. “Money grows on the tree of persistence.”— Japanese Proverb

76. “Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it ensures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises.” — Aristotle

77. “Money cannot buy peace of mind. It cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none.”— Richard M. DeVos

78. “If you wish to get rich, save what you get. A fool can earn money; but it takes a wise man to save and dispose of it to his own advantage.” ― Brigham Young

79. “There are people who have money and people who are rich.”— Coco Chanel

80. “Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.” — Carl Sandburg

81. “People say that money is not the key to happiness, but I always figured if you have enough money, you can have a key made.”— Joan Rivers

82. “I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for ten years.” — Warren Buffett

83. “Money can’t buy happiness, but it will certainly get you a better class of memories.” — Ronald Reagan

84. “If you’re saving, you’re succeeding.” ― Steve Burkholder

85. “Waste your money and you’re only out of money, but waste your time and you’ve lost a part of your life.”— Michael Leboeuf

86. “Financial peace isn’t the acquisition of stuff. It’s learning to live on less than you make, so you can give money back and have money to invest. You can’t win until you do this.”— Dave Ramsey

87. “Frugality includes all the other virtues.”— Cicero

88. “That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.”— Henry David Thoreau

89. “Do what you love and the money will follow.”— Marsha Sinetar

Do what you love and the money will follow

90. “I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.”— Robert Bosch

91. “If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.” — Edmund Burke

92. “No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.” — Plato

93. “Both poverty and riches are the offspring of thought.” — Napoleon Hill

94. “I don’t want to make money. I just want to be wonderful.”— Marilyn Monroe

95. “It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.”— Margaret Thatcher

96. “It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” — Robert Kiyosaki

97. “You can be young without money, but you can’t be old without it.” — Tennessee Williams

98. “Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like.” — Will Rogers

99. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” — Epictetus

100. “Money often costs too much.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

9 Comments

  1. Here are my quotes:

    Quote #1: “Never take financial advice from poor people.”

    Quote #2: “The borrower is slave to the lender.”

    1. Those are both great quotes. Thanks for sharing, David!

  2. How about this quote? Jesus said “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”. You show me where you invest your time and money and I’ll show you where your heart is. This earth is passing away and only what is done for Christ will last!!!!

    1. WellKeptWallet says:

      Humberto! That is a great quote. It is so true that how one uses money says a lot about what they value.

  3. Drop that Debt says:

    These are great quotes! Thanks!

  4. Holly@ClubThrifty says:

    I LOVE THESE!

  5. Mo' Money Mo' Houses (@momoneymohouses) says:

    #7 is so true!

    1. I know, right? It is sad but true.