Wealth and possessions - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

One who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters.

- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (1955)

The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worth-while are the search for knowledge and the creation of beauty.

- Arthur C. Clarke, ''Rocket to the Renaissance'' (1960)

Politics and economics are concerned with power and wealth, neither of which should be the primary, still less the exclusive, concern of grown-up men.

- Arthur C. Clarke, introduction to Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible (1962)

The real wealth of a planet is in its landscape, how we take part in that basic source of civilization - agriculture.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, pretty Maggie Moneyeyes, who came fromTucson and trailers and rheumatic fever and a surge to live that was all kaleidoscope frenzy of clawing scrabbling no-nonsense. If it took laying on one's back and making sounds like a panther in the desert, then one did it, because nothing, but nothing, was as bad as being dirt-poor, itchy-skinned, soiled-underwear, scuff-toed, hairy and ashamed lousy with the no-gots. Nothing!

- Harlan Ellison, ''Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes'' (1966)

''Everyone takes what is necessary, Captain,'' she had said. ''By definition they have to. It's what is taken that could be left behind that reveals the heart.''

- GeneWolfe, ''Alien Stones'' (1972)

Our men and women are free - possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes - the wall, the wall!

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)

I didn't become rich, but I was usually comfortable. That is a social disease, the symptom of which is the ability to ignore it while your society develops weeping pustules and has its brains eaten out by radioactive maggots.

- John Varley, ''The Persistence of Vision'' (1978)

The only things that matter are those made of truth and joy, and not of tin and glass.

- Richard Bach, There's No Such Place as Far Away (1979)

''I'm interested in alien philosophies,'' Nikolai said. ''The answers of other species to the great questions of existence.'' ''But there is only one central question,'' the alien said. ''We have pursued its answer from star to star.We were hoping that you would help us answer it.'' Nikolai was cautious. ''What is the question?'' ''What is it you have that we want?''

- Bruce Sterling, ''Twenty Evocations'' (1984)

A person's things can be a kind of exterior morphology of their mind - like a snail's shell, or something. I like to imagine what kind of person they were, from what's in their pockets.

- Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honor (1986)

There is only the dance. These things you treasure are shells.

- William Gibson, Count Zero (1986)

The child's-eye view is not fixed on the things it doesn't have. That comes later.

- George Turner, Drowning Towers (1987)

The only skill the alchemists of Ankh-Morpork had discovered so far was the ability to turn gold into less gold.

- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures (1990)

Possess nothing and be possessed by nothing. Put away what you have in your head, give what you have in your heart.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

Money doesn't exist in the twenty-fourth century. [. . .] The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives.We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

- Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, Star Trek: First Contact (film, 1996)

The rich and the famous, Kathy had once said, were seldom that way by accident. It was possible to be one or the other, but very seldom, accidentally, to be both.

- William Gibson, Idoru (1996)

Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead. It rots and stinks. True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work. By schoolchildren doing their lessons, improving their minds.

- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon (1999)