Bach Money Quotes

You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion, when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life … when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings … when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors … when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than the politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats...

Has it ever happened, you’ve seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they’ve done, what they’ve given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you’re happy to be a tiny part of the system that is rewarding those people with every ticket...the actors I see on the screen, they’ll get twenty cents of this very dollar I’m paying now; they’ll be able to buy an ice cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone. Glorious moments in art in books and films and dance, they’re delicious because we see ourselves in glory’s mirror.

Money is not an end in itself. It is merely a tool to help us achieve some particular goal. If the way we handle our money conflicts with our personal values, we are not going to wind up living happy and fulfilled lives.

If the way we handle our money conflicts with our personal values, we are not going to wind up living happy and fulfilled lives.

I prefer feeling insignificant," said Jess. "I don't believe that." "I didn't say worthless, I said insignificant, as in the grand scheme of things." "But why?" "Because humans have such a complex. We're so self-involved. You have to get out to a place like this to remember how small humanity really is." And Jess was right. Numbers didn't matter here. Money didn't count, and all the words and glances, the quick exchanges that built or tore down reputations had no meaning in this place. The air was moist. Fallen leaves, spreading branches, and crisscrossing roots wicked water, so that the trees seemed to drink the misty air. Jess said, "All your worries fade away, because..." Emily finished her thought. "The trees put everything in perspective.

Think of a dentist who has a list of patients, and for each patient, a list of teeth. It makes perfect sense (and plenty of money) to hold the patient fixed and vary his teeth-but it makes no sense at all to hold one tooth fixed and vary the patient. (Although sometimes it makes good sense to vary the dentist ... )

One way to get a life and keep it is to put energy into being an S&M (success and money) queen. I first heard this term in Karen Salmansohn’s fabulous book The 30-Day Plan to Whip Your Career Into Submission. Here’s how to do it: be a star at work. I don’t care if you flip burgers at McDonald’s or run a Fortune 500 company. Do everything with totality and excellence. Show up on time, all the time. Do what you say you will do. Contribute ideas. Take care of the people around you. Solve problems. Be an agent for change. Invest in being the best in your industry or the best in the world! If you’ve been thinking about changing professions, that’s even more reason to be a star at your current job. Operating with excellence now will get you back up to speed mentally and energetically so you can hit the ground running in your new position. It will also create good karma. When and if you finally do leave, your current employers will be happy to support you with a great reference and often leave an open door for additional work in the future. If you’re an entrepreneur, look at ways to enhance your business. Is there a new product or service you’ve wanted to offer? How can you create raving fans by making your customer service sparkle? How can you reach more people with your product or service? Can you impact thousands or even millions more? Let’s not forget the M in S&M. Getting a life and keeping it includes having strong financial health as well. This area is crucial because many women delay taking charge of their financial lives as they believe (or have been culturally conditioned to believe) that a man will come along and take care of it for them. This is a setup for disaster. You are an intelligent and capable woman. If you want to fully unleash your irresistibility, invest in your financial health now and don’t stop once you get involved in a relationship. If money management is a challenge for you, I highly recommend my favorite financial coach: David Bach. He is the bestselling author of many books, including The Automatic Millionaire, Smart Women Finish Rich, and Smart Couples Finish Rich. His advice is clear-cut and straightforward, and, most important, it works.

But my point applies to a broader audience. Indulge me in one more thought experiment, a familiar one: You will be stranded on a desert island, and you can take just 10 books and 10 music CDs. What do you choose? My prediction is that even people who don’t listen to classical music regularly will take Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Even people who haven’t picked up Shakespeare in years will take the collected works of Shakespeare. When we want something we can go back to again and again, we choose the same giants that the experts choose. My proposition about the literature, music, and visual arts of the last half century is that hardly any of it has enough substance to satisfy, over time. The post-1950 West has unquestionably produced some wonderful entertainments, and I do not mean wonderful slightingly. The Simpsons is wickedly smart, Saving Private Ryan is gripping, Groundhog Day is a brilliant moral fable. The West’s popular culture is for my money the only contemporary culture worth patronizing, with its best stories more compelling and revealing than the ones written by authors who purport to write serious novels, and its best popular music with more energy and charm than anything the academic composers turn out. It is a mixed bag, with the irredeemably vulgar side by side, sometimes intermingled, with the wittiest and most thoughtful work. But the quality is often first-rate—as well it might be. The people producing the best work include some who in another age could have been a Caravaggio or Brahms or Racine, and perhaps dozens of others good enough to have made their way onto the roster of significant figures. Why not be satisfied with wonderful entertainments?

If your money is not helping you make your life better, then something is wrong. Chances are you're not making a connection between your values and the role obey plays in your life.

SMART COUPLES TALK ABOUT MONEY ALL THE TIME The fact that most of us are not raised to talk about money is a real tragedy. Show me a couple who doesn’t talk about money and plan their finances together, and I will show you a couple headed for financial trouble—if they’re not already in it. When you work together on your finances, you can compound the results. When you don’t, the same can be said for the mistakes you will invariably make. In general, two heads are always better than one. No matter what your specific goal happens to be, having a partner working on it with you, providing encouragement and ideas, makes achieving that goal much easier. More specifically, the two of you will probably find it easier to save more money together than either of you can save separately. Which leads me to one of the basic points of this book. Couples Who Plan Together Have a Better Chance of Being Happy Together This, in a nutshell, is what this book is all about. By planning your finances together as a couple, you will significantly improve your chances of becoming wealthy and being happier together.

I understand you, Marco Antonio Guerra said to him. I mean, if I’m right, I think I understand you. You’re like me and I’m like you. We aren’t happy. The atmosphere around us is stifling. We pretend there’s nothing wrong, but there is. What’s wrong? We’re being fucking stifled. You let off steam your own way. I beat the shit out of people or let them beat the shit out of me. But the fights I get into aren’t just any fights, they’re fucking apocalyptic mayhem. I’m going to tell you a secret. Sometimes I go out at night, to bars you can’t even imagine. And I pretend to be a faggot. But not just any kind of faggot: smooth, stuck-up, sarcastic, a daisy in the filthiest pigsty in Sonora. Of course, I don’t have a gay bone in me, I can swear that on the grave of my dead mother. But I pretend that’s what I am. An arrogant little faggot with money who looks down on everyone. And then the inevitable happens. Two or three vultures ask me to step outside. And then the shit kicking begins. I know it and I don’t care. Sometimes they’re the ones who get the worst of it, especially when I have my gun. Other times it’s me. I don’t give a fuck. I need the fucking release. Sometimes my friends, the few friends I have, guys my age who are lawyers now, tell me I should be careful, I’m a time bomb, I’m a masochist. One of them, someone I was really close to, told me that only somebody like me could get away with what I did because I had my father to bail me out. Pure coincidence, that’s all. I’ve never asked my father for a thing. The truth is, I don’t have friends. I don’t want any. At least, I’d rather not have friends who’re Mexicans. Mexicans are rotten inside, did you know? Every last one of them. No one escapes. From the president of the republic to that clown Subcomandante Marcos. If I were Subcomandante Marcos, you know what I’d do? I’d launch an attack with my whole army on any city in Chiapas, so long as it had a strong military garrison. And there I’d sacrifice my poor Indians. And then I’d probably go live in Miami. What kind of music do you like? asked Amalfitano. Classical music, Professor, Vivaldi, Cimarosa, Bach. And what books do you read? I used to read everything, Professor, I read all the time. Now all I read is poetry. Poetry is the one thing that isn’t contaminated, the one thing that isn’t part of the game. I don’t know if you follow me, Professor. Only poetry—and let me be clear, only some of it—is good for you, only poetry isn’t shit.

When it comes to money, just having heard of something isn’t enough; you’ve got to know what it means.

It’s not what you know about money—it’s what you don’t know that can wipe you out.

all the money in the world won’t make you happy if what you do with it conflicts with your values.

I didn’t know how to read. Mother was my library. I read mother One day The world will be at peace Man will be able to fly Wheat will sprout in the snow Money will have no purpose (…) But in the meantime Mother says We have to work a lot. (Lu Yuan, Fairy Tales) A

I did think about a Ph.D. in computer science, but this is a time in industry where theory and practice are coming together in amazing ways. Yes, there's money, but what really interests me is that private-sector innovation happens faster. You can get more done and on a larger scale and have more impact. With all the start-ups out there, I think this is a time like the Renaissance. Not just one person doing great work, but so many feeding off one another. If you lived then, wouldn't you go out and paint?

Mattheson was perhaps too clever for his own good; nonetheless the smart money was on this sophisticated and broadly educated polymath. Later on he wrote about music from the vantage point of practical experience, not only as an observer but also as a trained professional. He considered opera houses essential to civic pride, a necessity, like having efficient banks: ‘The latter provide for general security, the former for education and refreshment … where the best banks are, so too are the best opera houses,’ he maintained.

When he said that, he looked lonelier than I had ever seen a man still alive. He didn’t need food or shelter or money or fame. He was dying of his need to say what he knew, and nobody cared enough to listen. I frowned at him, so as not to cry.

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law. (Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid)

The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach:

The problem isn't our income; it's what we do with our money once we get it... how much you earn has almost no bearing on whether or not you can and will build wealth.

Most of us don’t really think about how we spend our money—or if we do, we focus solely on the big items. At the same time, we ignore the small but steady expenses that drain away our cash.

Most of us don’t really think about how we spend our money—or if we do, we focus solely on the big items. At the same time, we ignore the small but steady expenses that drain away our cash. We don’t think about what it cost us to earn our money, and we don’t realize how much wealth we could have if, instead of wasting it, we invested it.

Love has nothing to do with money. It doesn’t matter if you love your spouse or partner more than anything in the world. If the two of you have conflicting values about money and make financial decisions that fail to accommodate each other’s feelings about the subject, you are going to have serious relationship problems.

Money is great to have, but all the money in the world won’t make you happy if what you do with it conflicts with your values.

FOR LONG-TERM DREAMS (FOUR TO TEN YEARS) Once you get to dreams that are going to take you more than four years to save for, you should really consider putting your dream-basket money into growth-oriented investments. Because you’ve got more time, you can afford to take more risk to get a bigger return. To my mind, that means investing in stock-based mutual funds.

If you have $10,000 sitting in a savings or checking account earning only 1.0 percent annually when it could be earning 4.5 percent, you are cheating yourself out of $450 a year in interest. The way I see it, that's a plane ticket to Hawaii or a fancy dream night out on the town or more money in your retirement account! In other words, that so-called free checking account at the bank really isn't. Quite the contrary, it's costing you a fortune.

There is nothing that will "fix" a bad credit report except the passage of time and a consistent record of responsible bill-paying, and you contacting the credit-report companies and working with them to get your credit record clean.

One of the most disappointing things about our schools and the way we raise our kids is that we don't spend more time teaching kids to take more risks. Instead, we teach them to play it safe. Be good, get good grades, get a good job, and eventually you can have a good retirement. That's the lesson society endorses. But what if that lesson is totally out of date? What if the idea that getting good grades and then going to a good college and then getting a good job represents an outmoded plan? In fact, most of our schools today are based on a model created over a hundred years ago for an industrial society in a world totally different from the one into which most of us were born. Back then, you went to work, punched a clock, did what you were told, and eventually were handed a gold watch (maybe). There was hierarchy and a well-defined system within which to work. Not anymore. Today, ideas created out of thin air can become billion-dollar enterprises. The people who get ahead are the ones who know how to communicate, how to think outside the box and persuade others. Unfortunately, many of our schools are still preparing our kids for the old system. Sit still. Be quiet. Do what you are told and we will give you good grades. Get good grades, get a good job and lifelong security. I'm not suggesting that kids shouldn't get good grades and go to college. Of course they should. But it seems to me that our schools are creating worker bees at a time when society is rewarding entrepreneurs. We need to raise our children to think bigger and more creatively than we did. So ask yourself right now, "What am I teaching my kids about life's challenges?" Are you raising your children to go for their dreams or simply to avoid failure?

If you think you are being underpaid, underappreciated, and underdeveloped in your current job, then you are being hurt as a human being--and that is unacceptable.

The fact is, you deserve every dollar you can get your hands on. There is nothing greedy about it. You deserve a raise, and you're capable of getting one. You just have to believe in yourself and start asking for it.

Darn her dirty diaper money. At least I didn’t peak as a baby model.

The illegal multi-billion-dollar trade in stolen art and antiquities ranked third in the world’s big-money rackets after arms and drugs.

The fact is, none of us really has a choice: We are all playing the money game whether we want to or not. The only question is: Are we winning?

Money may not make you happy, but LACK OF MONEY can certainly make you miserable.

If you sit down and get honest with yourself, you will find that 90% of your problems can be fixed with money