I had visited a world incomparably more affluent than this, in which money was unknown and without conceivable use. … These exchanges money effected — how equitably, might be seen in a walk from the tenement house districts to the Back Bay [Boston] — at a cost of an army of men taken from productive labor to manage it, with constant ruinous breakdowns of its machinery, and a generally debauching influence on mankind which had justified its description, from ancient time as the "root of all evil."
Question: If you had the power to create or erase any one law, what would it be? Answer: I would create a law that says everything in the world would cost 10 cents. I would want this law because a lot of poor or homeless people could afford a house and food.
It is an offence for a monk: to accept gold or silver with his own hand, or to get someone else to accept it for him; to buy various articles with gold and silver; to engage in any kind of buying or selling.
Commerce is of little use to them, but nevertheless they do know the value of money and they mint coins for their ambassadors so that they can purchase with money the provisions which they are unable to take with them, and they get merchants to come to them from all parts of the world in order to sell them their surplus wares. And the children laugh when they see those merchants giving so much merchandise for so little silver, but the older people do not laugh. They do not want to have slaves or foreigners corrupting the city with bad customs.
Revolted by the unscrupulous pursuit of wealth that marked the age, and shocked by the splendor and luxury of some clergymen, Saint Francis of Assisi, denounced money itself as a devil and a curse and bade his followers despise it as dung.
When all capital, all production, and all exchange are concentrated in the hands of the people … money [and stamps] will have become superfluous. — Friedrich Engels
Finally, when all capital, all production, and all exchange are concentrated in the hands of the people, private ownership will automatically have ceased to exist, money will have become superfluous, and production will have so increased and men will be so much changed that the last forms of the old social relations will also be able to fall away.
Let every man abide in the art or employment wherein he was called. And for their labor they may receive all necessary things, except money. ... Let none of the brothers, wherever he may be or whithersoever he may go, carry or receive money or coin in any manner, or cause it to be received, either for clothing, or for books, or as the price of any labor, or indeed for any reason, except on account of the manifest necessity of the sick brothers.
The final step is when the new socialist society reaches the stage where profit and money disappear. — Muammar Gaddafi
The final step is when the new socialist society reaches the stage where profit and money disappear. It is through transforming society into a fully productive society, and through reaching in production a level where the material needs of the members of society are satisfied. On that final stage, profit will automatically disappear and there will be no need for money.
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money (μαμωνᾷ).” The Pharisees, who loved money (φιλάργυροι), heard all this and sneered.
Contemptuous of wealth, [the Essenes] are communists to perfection … as with brothers, their entire property belongs to them all. … They possess no one city but everywhere have large colonies. When adherents arrive from elsewhere, all local resources are put at their disposal as if they were their own, and men they have never seen before entertain them like old friends. … Among themselves nothing is bought or sold.
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They Are!
When bacteria enter a person’s bloodstream, a person’s health is gradually undermined. It is the same with money as with bacteria. — Denjiro Shusui Kotoku
U.S. M1 Money Supply spikes during Covid in 2020
When bacteria enter a person’s bloodstream, a person’s health is gradually undermined. It is the same with money as with bacteria. Since money has unlimited power in the world, the ways of the world are bound to be increasingly debased. Step by step, morality is bound to be ruined and human nature faced with corruption. In the end, society is driven to destruction. … Nobody willingly becomes a prostitute. Nobody willingly sells their honour. There is nobody who does not want popular customs to be reformed or who does not want morality to be improved. Yet the reason why things work out differently is simply because of money. … Unless one abolishes the necessity for money in this world, it is quite impossible to improve the ways of the world or human nature.
Money is our madness, our vast collective madness.
And of course, if the multitude is mad the individual carries his own grain of insanity around with him.
I doubt if any man living hands out a pound note with-out a pang; and a real tremor, if he hands out a ten-pound note.
We quail, money makes us quail. — D. H. Lawrence We quail, money makes us quail. It has got us down, we grovel before it in strange terror. And no wonder, for money has a fearful cruel power among men.
But it is not money we are so terrified of, it is the collective money-madness of mankind.
For mankind says with one voice: How much is he worth? Has he no money? Then let him eat dirt, and go cold.—
I shall have to eat dirt / if I have no money. — D. H. Lawrence And if I have no money, they will give me a little bread so I do not die, but they will make me eat dirt with it. I shall have to eat dirt, I shall have to eat dirt if I have no money.
It is that that I am frightened of. And that fear can become a delirium. It is fear of my money-mad fellow-men.
We must have some money to save us from eating dirt.
And this is all wrong.
Bread should be free, shelter should be free, fire should be free to all and anybody, all and anybody, all over the world.
We must regain our sanity about money before we start killing one another about it. It's one thing or the other.
Kill money, put money out of existence. — D. H. Lawrence
Kill money, put money out of existence. It is a perverted instinct, a hidden thought which rots the brain, the blood, the bones, the stones, the soul.
Make up your mind about it: that society must establish itself upon a different principle from the one we've got now.
We must have the courage of mutual trust. We must have the modesty of simple living. And the individual must have his house, food and fire all free like a bird.
The task of abolishing the essence of Jewry is actually the task of abolishing the Jewish character of civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of the present-day practice of life, the most extreme expression of which is the money system.
Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes that this practical nature of his is futile and works to abolish it, he extricates himself from his previous development and works for human emancipation as such and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement. …
The god of practical need and self-interest is money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.
In Utopia all greed for money was entirely removed with the use of money. — Thomas More
In Utopia all greed for money was entirely removed with the use of money. What a mass of troubles was then cut away! What a crop of crimes was then pulled up by the roots! Who does not know that fraud, theft, rapine, quarrels, disorders, brawls, seditions, murders, treasons, poisonings, which are avenged rather than restrained by daily executions, die out with the destruction of money? Who does not know that fear, anxiety, worries, toils, and sleepless nights will also perish at the same time as money? What is more, poverty, which alone money seemed to make poor, forthwith would itself dwindle and disappear if money were entirely done away with everywhere.
He laughed loud and merrily, as if the idea of being paid for his work was a very funny joke. — William Morris
I blushed, and said, stammering, "Please don't take it amiss if I ask you; I mean no offence: but what ought I to pay you? You see I am a stranger, and don't know your customs — or your coins." And therewith I took a handful of money out of my pocket, as one does in a foreign country. … "I think I know what you mean," my new friend said thoughtfully, "you think I have done you a service; so you feel yourself bound to give me something special. I have heard of this kind of thing; but pardon me for saying, that seems to us a troublesome and roundabout custom; and we don't know how to manage it. And you see this ferrying and giving people casts about the water is my business, which I would do for anybody; so to take gifts in connection with it would look very queer. Besides, if one person gave me something, then another might, and another, and so on; and I hope you won't think me rude if I say that I shouldn't know where to stow away so many mementos of friendship." And he laughed loud and merrily, as if the idea of being paid for his work was a very funny joke.
Money, which has hitherto been the root, if not of all evil, of great injustice, oppression, and misery to the human race, making some slavish producers of wealth, and others its wasteful consumers or destroyers, will be no longer required to carry on the business of life: for as wealth of all kinds will be so delightfully created in greater abundance than will ever be required, no money price will be known, for happiness will not be purchasable, except by a reciprocity of good actions and kind feelings.
Gold and silver, we shall tell them, they will not need, having the divine counterparts of those metals always in their souls as a god-given possession, whose purity it is not lawful to sully by the acquisition of that mortal dross, current among mankind, which has been the occasion of so many unholy deeds.
Question 4: Why are your cities deserted today. Why have you abolished the role of money, the system of monthly wages, and the trade network? Answer (Pol Pot): We had to ask the people to go and live in the countryside in order to solve the food problem. … Staying in the cities meant starvation… As for the question of money … It is up to the people. If the people want to use money again, we will use money again. If they see that it is not necessary, it is up to them.
The Russian Communist Party endeavours to promote a series of measures favouring a moneyless system of account keeping, and paving the way for the abolition of money.
In the opening stage of the transition from capitalism to communism, and prior to the organisation of a fully developed system for the communist production and distribution of goods, the abolition of money is impossible. In these circumstances, the bourgeois elements of the population continue to use for speculation, profit-making, and the plundering of the workers, the monetary tokens that still remain in private ownership. Upon the basis of the nationalisation of banking, the Russian Communist Party endeavours to promote a series of measures favouring a moneyless system of account keeping, and paving the way for the abolition of money.
Fidel Castro says: "We've done way with a lot of privileges and inequalities and we want all of them to disappear, but the real problem isn't to redistribute income or equalize wares. “We must break from the mastery of money, get rid of money altogether.”
There is a very great deal to be said for the Anarchist plan of allowing necessaries, and all commodities that can easily be produced in quantities adequate to any possible demand, to be given away freely to all who ask for them, in any amounts they may require. The question whether this plan should be adopted is, to my mind, a purely technical one: would it be, in fact, possible to adopt it without much waste and consequent diversion of labor to the production of necessaries when it might be more usefully employed otherwise? I have not the means of answering this question, but I think it exceedingly probable that, sooner or later, with continued improvement in the methods of production, this Anarchist plan will become feasible; and when it does, it certainly ought to be adopted.
When I am king … there shall be no money. — Shakespeare
Jack Cade: And when I am king, as king I will be … There shall be no money … Dick (the butcher): The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
Full quote:
Cade: Be brave, then, for your captain is brave and vows reformation. There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny. The three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, and I will make it felony to drink small beer. All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass. And when I am king, as king I will be — All: God save your Majesty! Cade: I thank you, good people. — There shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers and worship me their lord. Dick: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
The dictature of money marches on, tending to its material peak, in the Faustian civilization as in every other. And now something happens that is intelligible only to one who has penetrated the essence of money. If it were anything tangible, then its existence would be forever — but, as it is a form of thought, it fades out as soon as it has thought its economic world to finality, and has no more material upon which to feed. … We have not the freedom to reach to this or that, but to do the necessary or to do nothing. And a task that historic necessity has set will be accomplished with the individual or against him.
Money is a new and terrible form of slavery. — Tolstoy
Money is a new and terrible form of slavery, and like the old form of personal slavery it demoralizes both slave and slave-owner, only much more, for it frees the slave and the slave-owner from personal, human relations with one another.
In a communist society, the state and money will disappear. — Leon Trotsky
In a communist society, the state and money will disappear. Their gradual dying away ought consequently to begin under socialism. We shall be able to speak of the actual triumph of socialism only at that historical moment when the state turns into a semi-state, and money begins to lose its magic power. This will mean that socialism, having freed itself from capitalist fetishes, is beginning to create a more lucid, free and worthy relation among men. Such characteristically anarchist demands as the ‘abolition’ of money, ‘abolition’ of wages, or ‘liquidation’ of the state and family, possess interest merely as models of mechanical thinking. Money cannot be arbitrarily ‘abolished’, nor the state and the old family ‘liquidated.’ They have to exhaust their historic mission, evaporate, and fall away. The deathblow to money fetishism will be struck only upon that stage when the steady growth of social wealth has made us bipeds forget our miserly attitude toward every excess minute of labor, and our humiliating fear about the size of our ration. Having lost its ability to bring happiness or trample men in the dust, money will turn into mere bookkeeping receipts for the convenience of statisticians and for planning purposes. In the still more distant future, probably these receipts will not be needed. But we can leave this question entirely to posterity, who will be more intelligent than we are.
As soon as dinner was over, both Candide and Cacambo thought they should pay very handsomely for their entertainment by laying down two of those large gold pieces which they had picked off the ground; but the landlord and landlady burst into a fit of laughing, and held their sides for some time. When the fit was over: "Gentlemen," said the landlady, "I plainly perceive you are strangers, and such we are not accustomed to see; pardon us therefore for laughing when you offered us the common pebbles of our highways for payment of your reckoning. To be sure, you have none of the coin of this kingdom; but there is no necessity for having any money at all to dine in this house. All the inns, which are established for the convenience of those who carry on the trade of this nation, are maintained by the government.
Money makes the world go ‘round. — Cabaret (1972 film)The most hated sort (of wealth getting) and with the greatest reason, is usury. — Aristotle
The most hated sort (of wealth getting) and with the greatest reason, is usury (ὀβολοστάτης), which makes a gain out of money itself and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange but not to increase at interest. And this term interest (τόκος), which means the birth of money from money is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth, this is the most unnatural.
The Hypocrite: A priest and a devil counting coins singing a hymn to Money. — Tim Bobbin
This hypocrite, whose holy look and dress Seem Heaven-born, whose heart is nothing less: He preaches, prays, and sings for worldly wealth, Till old sly Mammon takes it all by stealth, And leaves him naked on a dreary shore, Where cant and nonsense draw in fools no more.
They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be as an unclean thing; their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord; they shall not satisfy their souls, neither fill their bowels; because it hath been the stumblingblock of their iniquity.
These counterfeits, issued by the British government in New York, circulated among the inhabitants of all the states, before the fraud was detected. — Benjamin Franklin
The artists they employed performed so well that immense quantities of these counterfeits, which issued from the British government in New York, were circulated among the inhabitants of all the states, before the fraud was detected. This operated significantly in depreciating the whole mass.
The money pigs of capitalist democracy … has made slaves of us. — Joseph Goebbels
The money pigs of capitalist democracy…Money has made slaves of us… Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.
Joseph Goebbels, quoted in The Nazi Party: A Complete History 1919-1945, Dietrich Orlow, New York: NY, Enigma Books, 2012, p 61. Goebbels’ article, “Nationalsozialisten aus Berlin und aus dem Reich”, Voelkischer Beobachter (4 February 1927)
Such paper, stead of gold and jewelry / So handy is… — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe”The Paper Money Scheme” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mephostopholes: Such paper, stead of gold and jewelry, So handy is — one knows one's property: One has no need of bargains or exchanges, But drinks of love or wine, as fancy ranges. If one needs coin, the brokers ready stand, And if it fail, one digs awhile the land. Goblet and chain one then at auction sells, And paper, liquidated thus, compels The shame of doubters and their scornful wit. The people wish naught else; they're used to it: From this time forth, your borders, far and wide, With jewels, gold and paper are supplied. Emperor: You've given our empire this prosperity; The pay, then, equal to the service be! The soil entrusted to your keeping, shall you The best custodian be, to guard its value… This, your new dignity, to wear with pleasure, And bring the Upper World, erewhile asunder, In happiest conjunction with the Under. Treasurer: No further strife shall shake our joint position; I like to have as partner the magician.
Our fight is with money. Work alone will help us, not money. We must smash interest slavery.
Adolf Hitler, speech at the hall of Zum Deutschen Reich (December 18, 1919), quoted in Thomas Weber, Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (Basic Books, 2017), p. 138.
Money became more and more of a God. — Adolf Hitler
In proportion to the extent that commerce assumed definite control of the State, money became more and more of a God whom all had to serve and bow down to. Heavenly Gods became more and more old-fashioned and were laid away in the corners to make room for the worship of mammon. And thus began a period of utter degeneration which became specially pernicious because it set in at a time when the nation was more than ever in need of an exalted idea, for a critical hour was threatening.
Pelatiah Webster says of this paper and the continental currency: “We have suffered more from this cause than from any other cause or calamity. “It has killed more men, pervaded and corrupted the choicest interests of our country and done more injustice than even the arms and artifices of our enemies.”
The demonic person thinks: "So much wealth do I have today, and I will gain more and more according to my schemes. So much is mine now, and it will increase in the future, more and more. He is my enemy, and I have killed him; and my other enemy will also be killed. I am the lord of everything, I am the enjoyer, I am perfect, powerful and happy. I am the richest man, surrounded by aristocratic relatives. There is none so powerful and happy as I am. I shall perform sacrifices, I shall give some charity, and thus shall I rejoice." In this way, such persons are deluded by ignorance.
Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.
George Read thought the words [allowing the Federal government to “emit bills of credit” i.e., print paper money], if not struck out [of the Constitution] would be as alarming as the mark of the beast in Revelation.
Since gold does not disclose what has been transformed into it, everything, commodity or not, is convertible into gold. Everything becomes saleable and buyable. Circulation becomes the great social retort into which everything is thrown, to come out again as crystallized gold. Not even are the bones of Saints, and still less are more delicate res sactosancte extra commercium hominum [Sacrosanct things, beyond everyday affairs] able to withstand this alchemy. Just as every qualitative difference between commodities is extinguished in money, so money, on its side, like the radical leveler that it is, does away with all distinctions.
Timon Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No Gods, I am no idle votarist! … Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant… Why, this, Will lug your priests and servants from your sides, Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads: This yellow slave Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed; Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves And give them title, knee and approbation With senators on the bench: This is it That makes the wappen'd widow wed again; She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices To the April day again. … Damned earth, Thou common whore of mankind, that putt'st odds Among the rout of nations. …
(⌜To his gold.⌝) O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler Of Hymen's purest bed! thou valiant Mars! Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer, Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow That lies on Dian's lap! Thou visible God! That solderest close impossibilities, And mak'st them kiss! That speak'st with every tongue, To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts! Think thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtue Set them into confounding odds, that beasts May have the world in empire!
Money seduces and corrupts native innocents. — Sophocles
Creon Of evils current upon earth The worst is money. Money 'tis that sacks Cities, and drives men forth from hearth and home; Warps and seduces native innocence, And breeds a habit of dishonesty.
You can't live if you don't have money! / I am outside the Gates of Paradise! — The Living Theater
I am not allowed to travel without a passport … / My boundaries are set arbitrarily by others! / The Gates of Paradise are closed to me! …
I don't know how to stop the wars! / You can't live if you don't have money! … / I'm not allowed to take my clothes off! …
The actors begin to strip and when the stripping reached the legal limit, the actors shouted once more, "I'm not allowed to take my clothes off! I am outside the Gates of Paradise!"
The Living Theatre, Paradise Now, February 28, 1969 quoted in, No One Here Gets Out Alive, J. Hopkins & D. Sugerman (1980)
Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have earned it.
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