If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Burke warns that controlling wealth leads to freedom, while being controlled by wealth results in true poverty.
- In plain terms
- Master your money or it masters you.
- What can you take from it?
- Manage finances wisely to retain freedom.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What habits keep wealth from controlling you?
- Can wealth ever be truly free?
Another view
Wealth alone does not guarantee freedom; systemic factors matter.
More from Edmund Burke
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
Permalink to quote #149 All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and fro…
Permalink to quote #151 All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
Permalink to quote #148
Related quotes
'There is no rule so sure as that one that the same mill that grinds out fortunes above a certain size at the top, grinds out paupers at the bottom.' -- speech…
Huey P. LongHuey P. Long quote #7 'Few people have the sense of financial individuality strongly developed. They do not know what it means to be a controller of wealth, to have that which relea…
Theodore DreiserTheodore Dreiser quote #9 He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.
Mark TwainMark Twain quote #23