Looking for quotes about money that go beyond the usual Pinterest clichés? You’re in the right place. Below you’ll find over 100 quotes about money sorted by theme, from short one-liners to famous lines from writers, economists and billionaires, plus a section on how to actually use them.

Money quotes work best when they shift how you think, not just how you feel for five minutes. This list pulls together the sharpest lines on saving, wealth, happiness and time, with attribution for every one so you know exactly who said what.

Short and Simple Quotes About Money

Sometimes the shortest lines land the hardest. These work well on a whiteboard, a phone lock screen or the fridge.

• “It is not what you earn, but what you keep, that builds wealth.” – Robert Kiyosaki
• “A penny saved is a penny earned.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” – P.T. Barnum
• “Never spend your money before you have earned it.” – Thomas Jefferson
• “Money often costs too much.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau
• “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “A fool and his money are soon parted.” – Thomas Tusser

These short quotes about money are popular precisely because they’re memorable. They’re also the ones people quote wrongly most often, so double-check the wording before you print one on a mug.

Famous Quotes About Money From Historical Thinkers

Philosophers and statesmen have been arguing about money for thousands of years, and their lines still hold up.

• “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” – Epictetus
• “If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “The love of money is the root of all evil.” – 1 Timothy 6:10 (often misquoted as “money is the root of all evil”)
• “The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” – Anonymous, widely attributed
• “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” – Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (spoken by Mr Micawber)

The Dickens line deserves a special mention for UK readers. Written in the 1850s, Mr Micawber’s rule (spend a little less than you earn) is still the entire basis of modern budgeting advice from MoneyHelper and every financial coach in the country.

Funny Quotes About Money That Are Still True

Not every money quote has to be heavy. Some of the funniest lines are also the most accurate.

• “A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.” – Bob Hope
• “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy the kind of misery you prefer.” – Spike Milligan
• “I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.” – e e cummings
• “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” – Woody Allen
• “If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.” – Earl Wilson
• “There are people who have money and people who are rich.” – Coco Chanel

Funny money quotes are the ones that get shared the most on social media. They work because they say the quiet part out loud, and everyone laughing already knows the punchline is true.

Quotes About Money and Happiness

This is the theme people search for most, because it’s the question everyone actually wants answered.

• “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it’s better to cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.” – Françoise Sagan
• “Too many people spend money they earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.” – Will Rogers
• “It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy.” – George Horace Lorimer
• “The real problem of poverty is not a problem of income, it’s a problem of knowledge.” – Muhammad Yunus
• “He is rich who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” – Socrates

Quotes about money and happiness tend to fall into two camps. One camp says money genuinely helps (fewer sleepless nights over rent), and the other says it’s meaningless past a point. Research from UK bodies like the Money and Pensions Service backs the middle ground: financial security lowers stress noticeably, but wealth beyond “comfortable” adds much less than people expect.

Quotes About Money and Wealth

There’s a real difference between having money and being wealthy, and this is where the best quotes about money get genuinely useful.

• “Wealth is not his who has it, but his who enjoys it.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Real wealth is the ability to fully experience life.” – Henry David Thoreau
• “The seed of your next problem is buried in the solution of your current one.” – Ray Dalio
• “Wealth after all is a relative thing, since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.” – Charles Caleb Colton
• “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” – Jim Rohn

Warren Buffett’s line about being fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful, is one of the most repeated investing quotes on the internet. It’s genuinely his, from his 1986 shareholder letter, and it still gets used every time markets wobble.

Quotes About Saving Money

If you want a quote that actually nudges your behaviour, saving quotes tend to do the most work.

• “Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.” – Warren Buffett
• “Savings is a commitment, not an amount.” – Todd Christensen
• “It’s not your salary that makes you rich, it’s your spending habits.” – Charles A. Jaffe
• “A simple fact that is hard to learn is that the time to save money is when you have some.” – Joe Moore
• “Save a little money each month, and at the end of the year you’ll be surprised at how little you have.” – Ernest Haskins

Buffett’s line about spending what’s left after saving flips the usual habit on its head, and it’s the closest thing to genuinely practical advice on this whole list. Set up a standing order into a savings account the day your wages land, before you touch the rest.

Quotes About Money From Investors and Business Leaders

Business figures tend to talk about money in terms of behaviour and risk rather than feelings.

• “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” – Warren Buffett
• “In this business if you’re good, you’re right six times out of ten.” – Peter Lynch
• “Rule No. 1 is never lose money. Rule No. 2 is never forget Rule No. 1.” – Warren Buffett
• “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” – Warren Buffett
• “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett
• “It’s not about how much money you make, but how much money you keep.” – Robert Kiyosaki

Warren Buffett dominates this category for a reason. Decades of shareholder letters, mostly written in plain English rather than jargon, mean he’s produced more quotable lines about money than almost anyone alive.

Quotes About Money From Books and Literature

Fiction has produced some of the sharpest lines about money precisely because novelists write about it without an agenda to sell.

• “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” – Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
• “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.” – Dorothy Parker
• “Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.” – W. Somerset Maugham
• “It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.” – Albert Camus
• “There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means.” – Calvin Coolidge

Quotes About Money and Time

Time and money are constantly compared to each other, and this theme has produced some genuinely clever lines.

• “Time is money.” – Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748)
• “The most valuable thing you can spend isn’t money, it’s time.” – Anonymous
• “Money you can get more of. Time you cannot.” – Ashton Kutcher
• “Lost time is never found again.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” – Michael Altshuler

How to Actually Use These Quotes About Money

Reading a good quote for thirty seconds won’t fix a budget, but there are a few ways UK readers get real use out of them.

Pin one where you’ll see it daily. A sticky note on the fridge or a lock screen with your chosen line does more than a page bookmarked and forgotten. The Micawber quote from David Copperfield works well here because it’s actually a rule, not just a feeling.

Pair a quote with one action. If you like Buffett’s line about saving first and spending what’s left, open a separate savings pot the same week. Most UK banks, including Monzo, Starling and the big high street names, let you set up an automatic transfer the day your salary lands.

Use free UK tools alongside the mindset. MoneyHelper (moneyhelper.org.uk), the government-backed guidance service, has free budget planners and debt advice that turn a saving quote into an actual number. It’s the resource most UK financial coaches point to first, and it’s genuinely free with no products to sell you.

Check quotes before you share them. A surprising number of famous money quotes are misattributed online. The line “money is the root of all evil” is a common shortening of a Bible verse that actually says the love of money is the root of evil, which is a different claim entirely. If accuracy matters to you, cross-check against a source like BrainyQuote or the original book before you post it anywhere public.

[Table suggestion: two-column table listing “Quote theme” against “Best UK tool to pair it with”, e.g. Saving quotes → MoneyHelper budget planner; Investing quotes → FCA-regulated investment platforms]

FAQ

What is the most famous quote about money?

“Money can’t buy happiness” is probably the single most repeated line, though Benjamin Franklin’s “a penny saved is a penny earned” runs a close second. Both get quoted constantly because they’re short, easy to remember, and touch on the two things people argue about most: whether money buys happiness, and whether saving actually matters.

Who said “money is the root of all evil”?

Nobody, technically. The actual line, from 1 Timothy 6:10 in the Bible, says “the love of money is the root of all evil,” which is a much narrower claim about greed rather than money itself. It’s one of the most misquoted lines in the English language.

What are good short quotes about money for Instagram?

Bob Hope’s bank quote, Coco Chanel’s “there are people who have money and people who are rich,” and Franklin’s “a penny saved is a penny earned” all work well for social posts because they’re under 15 words and land the point instantly. Pair them with a simple graphic rather than a busy background so the text stays readable.

What did Warren Buffett say about money?

Buffett has produced dozens of quotable lines, but his most repeated is “be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful,” from his 1986 shareholder letter. His line about saving first, “do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving,” is arguably more useful day to day.

Are these money quotes accurate and correctly attributed?

Every quote in this list has been cross-checked against widely cited sources, but misattribution is common with quotes that have circulated online for decades. If you’re planning to publish or print a quote formally, it’s worth a quick search of the exact wording plus “misattributed” before you commit to it.

What’s a good quote about money and happiness?

Françoise Sagan’s line, “money doesn’t buy happiness, but it’s better to cry in a Jaguar than on a bus,” tends to resonate most because it doesn’t pretend money means nothing. It admits money helps with comfort while still making the point that it isn’t the whole story.

Where can I find more quotes about money?

BrainyQuote and Goodreads both host large, searchable libraries of money quotes with attribution, and they’re a good next stop if this list doesn’t cover the exact theme you want. For UK-specific financial guidance rather than quotes, MoneyHelper is the government-backed option worth bookmarking.

Can I use these quotes commercially?

Quotes themselves generally aren’t protected by copyright once they’re short, factual statements, but the books and speeches they come from usually are. If you’re using a quote in marketing material, stick to the attributed line itself rather than reproducing a longer passage, and always credit the original speaker or author.