Top 200 Money Quotes of All Time

Great quotes encapsulate big ideas in few words.  They inspire, motivate, and encourage in a memorable way.  In my book, Retire Before Mom and Dad, I use quotes to help drive home important principles of personal finance and investing. In that spirit, I've assembled the top 100 quotes about money.

Money Quotes of All Time

1. “Beware of small expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” – Benjamin Franklin
2. “Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions.” – A.A. Latimer
3. “My old father used to have a saying: If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter.” – Abraham Lincoln
4. “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.” – Albert Einstein
5. “When a man says money can do anything, that settles it. He hasn’t any.” – George Bernard Shaw
6. “He who marries for love without money has good nights and sorry days.” – Anonymous
7. “The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” – Anonymous
8. “Does it pay to listen? Always.” – Arlene Dickinson
9. “Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
10. “Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.” – Ayn Rand
11. “The best way to teach your kids about taxes is by eating 30% of their ice cream.” – Bill Murray
12. “Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.” – Ayn Rand
13. “The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.” – Ben Graham
14. “A penny saved is a penny earned.” – Benjamin Franklin
15. “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” – Woody Allen
16. “If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.” – Benjamin Franklin
17. “If saving money is wrong, I don’t want to be right!” – William Shatner
18. “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
19. “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.” – Bob Dylan
20. “Trust me, I know, you can make mistakes with money and still raise money-smart kids. You can start a new family tradition of handling money the right way.” – Dave Ramsey
21. “If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.” – Billy Graham
22. “I despise the Lottery. There’s less chance of you becoming a millionaire than there is of getting hit on the head by a passing asteroid.” – Brian May
23. “Today the greatest single source of wealth is between your ears.” – Brian Tracy
24. “Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.” – Charles Caleb Colton
25. “If plan A fails, remember there are 25 more letters.” – Chris Guillebeau
26. “While money doesn’t buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.” – Christopher Marlowe
27. “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
28. “Frugality includes all the other virtues.” – Cicero
29. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie
30. “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau
31. “A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.” – Bob Hope
32. “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
33. “To get rich, you have to be making money while you’re asleep.” – David Bailey
34. “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley
35. “It’s how you deal with failure that determines how you achieve success.” – David Feherty
36. “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.” – David Lee Roth
37. “Persist – don’t take no for an answer. If you’re happy to sit at your desk and not take any risk, you’ll be sitting at your desk for the next 20 years.” – David Rubenstein
38. “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.” – Donald Trump
39. “If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.” – Edmund Burke
40. “He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
41. “It’s not your salary that makes you rich, it’s your spending habits.” – Charles Jaffe
42. “If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to.” – Dorothy Parker
43. “No man’s credit is ever as good as his money.” – Edgar Watson Howe
44. “If God has allowed me to earn so much money, it is because He knows I give it all away.” – Edit Piaf
45. “Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.” – Donald Trump
46. “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” – Yogi Berra
47. “He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
48. “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” – Woody Allen
49. “The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your pocket.” – Kin Hubbard
50. “A feast is prepared for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.” – King Solomon
51. “You’ve got to tell your money what to do or it will leave.” – Dave Ramsey
52. “Money is the best deodorant.” – Elizabeth Taylor
53. “The more you learn, the more you earn.” – Frank Clark
54. “I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.” – Eminem
55. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” – Epictetus
56. “The mint makes it first, it is up to you to make it last.” – Evan Esar
57. “My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.” – Errol Flynn
58. “Many folks think they aren’t good at earning money, when what they don’t know is how to use it.” – Frank A. Clark
59. “Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks – it says, “Goodbye.” – Frank Sinatra
60. “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
61. “Very few people can afford to be poor.” – George Bernard Shaw
62. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” – Albert Einstein
63. “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
64. “I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong…I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.” – George Soros
65. “Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.” – Groucho Marx
66. “The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.” – H. L. Mencken
67. “Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.” – Helen Gurley Brown
68. “I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by four o’clock.” – Henny Youngman
69. “I make myself rich by making my wants few.” – Henry David Thoreau
70. “Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.” – Zig Ziglar
71. “If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.” – Earl Wilson
72. “Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil.” – Henry Fielding
73. “Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.” – J. Paul Getty
74. “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
75. “It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money.It’s the customer who pays the wages.” – Henry Ford
76. “A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.” – Henry Kravis
77. “The trick is to stop thinking of it as ‘your’ money.” – IRS auditor
78. “You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.” – J. K. Rowling
79. “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
80. “Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves.” – Zig Ziglar
81. “Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” – Joe Biden
82. “Try to save something while your salary is small; it’s impossible to save after you begin to earn more.” – Jack Benny
83. “The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place.” – Jim Rohn
84. “Money is not the most important thing in the world. Love is. Fortunately, I love money.” – Jackie Mason
85. “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.” – James Goldsmith
86. “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn
87. “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
88. “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
89. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” – Jim Rohn
90. “I don’t like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves.” – Joe Louis
91. “A budget is telling your money where to go, instead of wondering where it went.” – John C. Maxwell
92. “A simple fact that is hard to learn is that the time to save money is when you have some.” – Joe Moore
93. “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
94. “If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.” – John Bogle
95. “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” – John Wayne
96. “Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, invest as much as you can, give as much as you can.” – John Wesley
97. “You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren’t allowed to be normal.” – Johnny Depp
98. “The only thing I like more than my wife is my money, and I’m not about to lose that to her and her lawyers, that’s for damn sure.” – Jon Bon Jovi
99. “A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.” – Jonathan Swift
100. “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to meet it! ” – Jonathan Winters
101. “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” – P.T. Barnum
102. “What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.” – Julia Cameron
103. “Money is like love; it kills slowly and painfully the one who withholds it, and enlivens the other who turns it on his fellow man.” – Kahlil Gibran
104. “Trust me, I know, you can make mistakes with money and still raise money-smart kids. You can start a new family tradition of handling money the right way.” – Dave Ramsey
105. “For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.” – Kanye West
106. “The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.” – Katharine Whitehorn
107. “We didn’t actually overspend our budget. The allocation simply fell short of our expenditure.” – Keith Davis
108. “Here’s how I think of my money – as soldiers – I send them out to war everyday. I want them to take prisoners and come home, so there’s more of them.” – Kevin O’Leary
109. “If you don’t value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know & start charging for it.” – Kim Garst
110. “It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.” – Kin Hubbard
111. “The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.” – Phillip Fisher
112. “I don’t want to make money; I want to make a difference.” – Lady Gaga
113. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
114. “You don’t have to die in order to make a living.” – Lynn Johnston
115. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” – Mark Twain
116. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi
117. “I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.” – Malcolm Forbes
118. “It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.” – Margaret Thatcher
119. “Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.” – Mark Twain
120. “There is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich.” – Marlene Dietrich
121. “The four most expensive words in the English language are, ‘This time it’s different.’ ” – Sir John Templeton
122. “Lack of money is the root of all evil.” – George Bernard Shaw
123. “Money: power at its most liquid.” – Mason Cooley
124. “Business is the art of extracting money from another man’s pocket without resorting to violence.” – Max Amsterdam
125. “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
126. “Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.” – Miguel de Cervantes
127. “Money will come when you are doing the right thing.” – Mike Phillips
128. “To make a million, start with $900,000.” – Morton Shulman
129. “More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.” – Napoleon Hill
130. “Every time you borrow money, you’re robbing your future self.” – Nathan W. Morris
131. “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
132. “Money won’t create success, the freedom to make it will.” – Nelson Mandela
133. “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
134. “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” – Norman Vincent Peale
135. “Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.” – Oliver Wendell
136. “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” – Oscar Wilde
137. “Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.” – Oprah Winfrey
138. “One penny may seem to you a very insignificant thing, but it is the small seed from which fortunes spring.” – Orison Swett Marden
139. “There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.” – Oscar Wilde
140. “You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you.” – Dave Ramsey
141. “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
142. “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.” – Pablo Picasso
143. “The stock market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient.” – Warren Buffett
144. “Money often costs too much.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
145. “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
146. “No wealth can ever make a bad man at peace with himself.” – Plato
147. “The art is not in making money, but in keeping it.” – Proverb
148. “Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
149. “All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.” – Ray Kroc
150. “Money is the opposite of the weather. Nobody talks about it, but everybody does something about it.” – Rebecca Johnson
151. “If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.” – Vicki Robin
152. “When buying shares, ask yourself, would you buy the whole company? ” – Rene Rivkin
153. “Money will buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail.” – Richard Friedman
154. “Money cannot buy peace of mind. It cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none.” – Richard M. DeVos
155. “Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning.” – Robert Kiyosaki
156. “Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be.” – Rita Rudner
157. “A single idea” – the sudden flash of a thought” – may be worth a million dollars.” – Robert Collier
158. “How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.” – Robert G. Allen
159. “Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale.” – Zig Ziglar
160. “I’m a cash flow guy. If it doesn’t make me money today, forget about it.” – Robert Kiyosak
161. “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vidal Sassoon
162. “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
163. “The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that governments spend too much.” – Ronald Reagan
164. “Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears.” – Robert W. Sarnoff
165. “Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.” – Roger Babson
166. “Money can’t buy happiness, but it will certainly get you a better class of memories.” – Ronald Reagan
167. “Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.” – Robert Orben
168. ““Making money is a hobby that will complement any other hobbies you have, beautifully.” – Scott Alexander
169. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” – Seneca
170. “The art of living easily as to money is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.” – Sir Henry Taylor
171. “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
172. “What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.” – Seneca
173. “All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.” – Spike Milligan
174. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs
175. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” – Steve Jobs
176. “No one’s ever achieved financial fitness with a January resolution that’s abandoned by February.” – Suze Orman
177. “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
178. “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
179. “You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it.” – Tennessee Williams
180. “For I don’t care too much for money, for money can’t buy me love.” – The Beatles
181. “The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your back pocket.” – Will Rogers
182. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
183. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison
184. “When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.” – Voltaire
185. “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” – Thomas Jefferson
186. “Money is like a sixth sense – and you can’t make use of the other five without it.” – William Somerset Maugham
187. “The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.” – Thomas Jefferson
188. “Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.” – Thornton Wilder
189. “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.” – Timothy Ferriss
190. “It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.” – Vince Lombardi
191. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill
192. “Fortune sides with him who dares.” – Virgil
193. “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
194. “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like.” – Will Rogers
195. “The key to making money is to stay invested.” – Suze Orman
196. “If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.” – Benjamin Franklin
197. “Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give.” – William Arthur Ward
198. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
199. “Never spend your money before you have it.” – Thomas Jefferson
200. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison