"Money features in two kinds of stories; those of the oppressors who crush the forsaken by financial means, and those of the oppressed who free themselves thanks to financial independence. In one case, it is a power that enslaves, in the other, a force that liberates. That is its ambiguity: when it is condemned we want to defend it; when it is defended we want to attack it. Like sex, it is overflowing with meaning, giving rise to countless synonyms that never really designate what it is: bread, lettuce, gravy, jack, loot, moola, scratch, portraits of dead presidents. And this is true in all languages."
Pascal Bruckner The Wisdom of Money (2017) p.2
