The Quotation IndexThe trusted reference for quotations and the sources behind them
Category Economics

Featured Quote in Economics

Beware of little expenses, a small leak will sink a great ship.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack · 1732-1758

Subcategories

Wealth (12) Money (24) Trade (3) Markets (5) Political economy (3) Labour (3) Poverty (3) Development (0) Investment (2)

Economics Quotes

“Beware of little expenses, a small leak will sink a great ship.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“For age and want save while you may; no morning sun lasts a whole day.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Remember that Time is Money.”

Benjamin Franklin · Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748 · Primary source

“Creditors have better memories than debtors.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Never spend your money before you have it.”

Thomas Jefferson · Letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825 · Primary source

“Never buy a what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.”

Thomas Jefferson · Letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825 · Primary source

“He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly, need not be rich.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“In short, the Way to Wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the Way to Market. It depends chiefly on two Words, Industry and Frugality; i.e. Waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best Use of both. He that gets all he can honestly, and saves all he gets (necessary Expences excepted) will certainly become Rich.”

Benjamin Franklin · Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748 · Primary source

“Great estates may venture more; little boats must keep near shore.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Put all your eggs in the one basket and—watch that basket!”

Mark Twain · The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894 · Primary source

“The absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price—and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get any thing without its price—is not less sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“Rather go to bed supperless, than run in debt for a breakfast.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Best use of money is to pay debts.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“Silk and satins and scarlets and velvets put out the kitchen fire.”

Benjamin Franklin · The Way to Wealth, 1758 · Primary source

“’Tis easier to build two chimneys, than maintain one in fuel.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Industry pays debts, despair increases them.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“He that drinks fast, pays slow.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“If a man owns land, the land owns him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“The creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“At the working man’s house hunger looks in but dares not enter.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“I find it quite useful to think of a free market economy—partly free market economy—as sort of the equivalent of an ecosystem. Just as animals flourish in niches, people who specialize in some narrow niche can do very well.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“Computing is a good historical example where lower costs actually caused the overall market to grow.”

Bill Gates · The Year Ahead 2026: Optimism with footnotes, 2026 · Primary source

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“For our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“A light purse is a heavy curse.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The second vice is lying; the first is running in debt.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“If you’d know the value of money, go and borrow some.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“If you want to be wealthy, think of saving as well as of earning.”

Benjamin Franklin · The Way to Wealth, 1758 · Primary source

“He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”

Ernest Hemingway · Notes on the Next War, 1935 · Primary source

“The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people’s savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Sleep without supping, and you'll rise without owing for it.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“To be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the masterworks and chief men of each race. It is to have the sea, by voyaging; to visit the mountains, Niagara, the Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constantinople; to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, manufactories.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“Everybody who is adult should save and not be stupidly spending money and defer gratification to get more later.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“Patience in a market, is worth pounds in a year.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Now when a country does not pay its debts you cannot take its word on anything.”

Ernest Hemingway · Notes on the Next War, 1935 · Primary source

“An hundred thieves cannot strip one naked man, especially if his skin’s off.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Buy what thou hast no need of; and e’er long thou shalt sell thy necessaries.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The secret of success lies never in the amount of money, but in the relation of income to outgo; as if, after expense has been fixed at a certain point, then new and steady rills of income, though never so small, being added, wealth begins.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.”

Mark Twain · The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894 · Primary source

“It is commonly observed, that a sudden wealth, like a prize drawn in a lottery, or a large bequest to a poor family, does not permanently enrich. They have served no apprenticeship to wealth, and, with the rapid wealth, come rapid claims: which they do not know how to deny, and the treasure is quickly dissipated.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“An empty bag cannot stand upright.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Society in large towns is babyish, and wealth is made a toy.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“No nation was ever ruined by trade.”

Benjamin Franklin · No reliable source

“The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.”

Benjamin Franklin · No reliable source

“Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?”

Bill Gates · An Open Letter to Hobbyists, 1976 · Primary source

“A penny saved is a penny earned.”

Benjamin Franklin · No reliable source

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it.”

Albert Einstein · No reliable source

“How did you go bankrupt? Two ways, gradually and then suddenly.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Sun Also Rises, 1926 · Primary source

“Hope of gain lessens pain.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Benjamin Franklin · Letter to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 1789 · Primary source

“The great defect of scale, of course, which makes the game interesting, so that the big people don’t always win—is that as you get big, you get the bureaucracy.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“There’s a simple rule: fish where the fish are.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, which few men can play well. The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“The first wealth is health.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Power, 1860 · Primary source

“Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left. I believe that the prime responsibility of a manager is to guard constantly against other people’s attacks and to inculcate this guardian attitude in the people under his or her management.”

Andrew S. Grove · High Output Management, 1983 · Primary source

“One good husband is worth two good wives; for the scarcer things are the more they’re valued.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Necessity never made a good bargain.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Drink water; put the money in your pocket, and leave the dry-bellyache in the punch-bowl.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“In business we often find that the winning system goes almost ridiculously far in maximizing and/or minimizing one or a few variables—like the discount warehourses of Costco.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your business.”

Andrew S. Grove · Only the Paranoid Survive, 1996 · Primary source

“Hedging is expensive and dilutes commitment.”

Andrew S. Grove · Only the Paranoid Survive, 1996 · Primary source

“Bad gains are truly losses.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it. We must act. We must act quickly.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt · First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933 · Primary source

“In all branches of commerce and industry, history shows dramatic reduction in the error rates when their cost is brought back from the customer to the perpetrator.”

Tony Hoare · How Did Software Get So Reliable Without Proof?, 1996 · Primary source

“If you’d lose a troublesome visitor, lend him money.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“I don’t think AI’s impact will be as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution, but it certainly will be as big as the introduction of the PC.”

Bill Gates · The Risks of AI are Real but Manageable, 2023 · Primary source

“The gain to the winner is, in some odd way, always less than the loss to the loser.”

Ian Fleming · Moonraker, 1955 · Primary source

“A man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but little.”

Benjamin Franklin · The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1771-1790 · Primary source

“Rome seemed as powerful and stable as ever. But below the surface the foundations were cracking, and through the fissures new ideas and new institutions were thrusting themselves. The cities are everywhere in decline; trade, industry, and agriculture bend under the weight of taxation. Communications are less safe, and some provinces are infested with marauders, peasants who can no longer earn a living on the land.”

Winston Churchill · A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, 1956-1958 · Primary source

“Where there’s no law, there’s no bread.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Remember that by saying yes—to projects, a course of action, or whatever—you are implicitiy saying no to something else. Each time you make a commitment, you forfeit your chance to commit to something else.”

Andrew S. Grove · High Output Management, 1983 · Primary source

“Lend money to an enemy, and thou’lt gain him, to a friend and thou’lt lose him.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“I have never seen the philosopher’s stone that turns lead into gold, but I have known the pursuit of it turn a man’s gold into lead.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The right investment is in tools of your trade.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“He’s a fool that makes his doctor his heir.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”

Vilfredo Pareto · No reliable source

“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”

Charlie Munger · No reliable source

“Money is a tool to be put to work.”

A.P. Møller · No reliable source

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

Benjamin Franklin · No reliable source

Explore the category

Economics

9 subcategories · 11 authors · 16 works · 177 themes · 300 tags
Authors
Albert Einstein Theoretical physicistBenjamin Franklin American statesmanBill Gates American Entrepreneur and Philanthropist
Works
Poor Richard’s Almanack Benjamin Franklin · 1732-1758Advice to a Young Tradesman Benjamin Franklin · 1748The Way to Wealth Benjamin Franklin · 1758
Themes
Adaptation to changing workSmall losses accumulateAttention to minor expenses
Tags
DebtWealthThriftSaving
✓Copied