Alternative Values

MISCELLANY

ARGUMENTS FOR THE PURSUIT OF WEALTH AND POWER

20. Those who are not envied are never wholly happy. It is a nobler fate to be envied than to be pitied.

AESCHYLUS, 525–456 BCE, Agamemnon I

21. As wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other.

EDMUND BURKE, 1729–1797, Speech in the House of Commons, February 11, 1780

22. The law may in a mad freak say that all shall have power except the owners of property; they shall have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write every statute that respects property.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1803–1882, Politics

23. Men, such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 1803–1882, The American Scholar

24. To the lowly, the powerful and rich are as gods.

EURIPIDES, 485–406 BCE, Iphigenia in Tauris

25. Money is power in American politics. It always has been.

WILLIAM GREIDER, 1936–, Who Will Tell the People

26. So oblique is human judgment that we nearly always praise the lavish habits of princes, though they be joined with rapacity; more so, in fact, than we praise their parsimony, which is usually attended by a sacred regard for the property of others.

FRANCESCO GUICCIARDINI, 1483–1540, Storia d’Italia

27. It is much better to be envied than pitied.

HERODOTUS, c. 485–c. 425 BCE, Histories

28. We are . . . removed farther than ever away from the happy sons of earth who lord it over land and sea and men in the full-blown lustihood that wealth and power can give, and before whom, stiffen ourselves as we will by appealing to anti-snobbish first principles, we cannot escape an emotion, open or sneaking, of respect and dread.

WILLIAM JAMES, 1842–1910, Psychology X

29. Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place.

ALEXANDER POPE, 1688–1744, Imitations of Horace

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE PURSUIT OF WEALTH AND FAME

30. What is fame? an empty bubble; Gold? a transient, shining trouble.

JAMES GRAINGER, 1721–1766, Solitude 1.96