Francis Bacon

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity does best discover vice, but adversity does best discover virtue.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

In every great time there is some one idea at work which is more powerful than any other, and which shapes the events of the time and determines their ultimate issues.

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

The only wealth I have to give is not material and if you need much more than that, I’m not available.

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be.

Of great wealth there is no real use, except in its distribution, the rest is just conceit.

Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.

very day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.

Abramovich’s got six yachts which are just gigantic and you think, ‘What a waste of money. He could transform so many people’s lives if he put that money to good use.

When I see something I like, I buy it, but I do not look for it madly.

No man’s fortune can be an end worthy of his being.

Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.

My life with Roman was not the fairytale that the papers reported.

We went to theatres and museums with a crowd of bodyguards.

Wealth – any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one’s wife’s sister’s husband.

I am the wealthiest man, not just in Europe, but in the whole world. I collect emotions. I am wealthy in that the people of Russia have twice entrusted me with the leadership of a great nation such as Russia – I believe that is my greatest wealth.

We were afraid of attempts of kidnapping.