Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Money influences whether doctrines are seen as true or false.
In plain terms
People change their minds when paid enough.
What can you take from it?
Money can corrupt beliefs and judgments.

Where it applies

  • legal system
  • journalism
  • academia

Putting it to work

  • value truth over profit
  • watch for financial bias

Questions to consider

  • Can you stay neutral if paid?
  • Why do people sell their beliefs?

Another view

Income helps sustain careers regardless of ideals.

More from Samuel Butler

  1. Love is a boy, by poets styled, Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

    Permalink to quote #17
  2. Neither have they hearts to stay, Nor wit enough to run away.

    Permalink to quote #19
  3. To swallow gudgeons ere they're catched, And count their chickens ere they're hatched.

    Permalink to quote #16

Related quotes

  1. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prosti…

    Thomas PaineThomas Paine quote #31
  2. The soul is subject to dollars.

    Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson quote #62
  3. Business - the world's work - is the sale of lies: Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more In every branch becomes the sale of money.

    John DavidsonJohn Davidson quote #1