Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.
Interpretation
Money needs to be utilized and distributed wisely to create value; otherwise, it becomes useless.
J. Paul Getty's quote compares money to manure, emphasizing that just as manure must be spread out to fertilize the ground and promote growth, money too must be actively used or distributed to have a positive impact. If hoarded, it becomes worthless, creating a stagnant situation rather than contributing to progress and success.
In practice
In a business seminar discussing financial management, one might say, 'As J. Paul Getty wisely noted, money is like manure; we must spread it around to see growth.'
Today's dissenters mainly focus their attention and expend their energies on the most inconsequential of trivia. ...Allegedly serious intellectuals quibble endlessly over such ridiculous trivialities...In the meantime, the public is lulled into a perilous somnolence, spoon-fed pap, and palpable untruths, many of which are turned out by special-interest and pressure groups and well organized propaganda machines.
You must not only learn to live with tension, you must seek it out. You must learn to thrive on stress.
In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.
The #1 guideline to success is you must be in business for yourself. When you work for someone else, you sell your time at wholesale to your employer, who then re-sells it at retail to the customer.
Patience; this is the greatest business asset. Wait for the right time to make your moves.
There is only one way to make a great deal of money; and that is in a business of your own.
It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.
After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!
I never set out to be a businessman
Knowledge will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical plans of action, to the definite end of accumulation of money.
It is more difficult to stay on top than to get there.
Certainly, I've never wanted to live on past achievements.
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