Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Rich and Poor")

Sep. 28 - Oct. 4, 2025 | THIS WEEK'S THEME: “Rich and Poor"

Opening Line of the Week

A popular technique in non-fiction writing—and especially in philosophical treatises—is to begin with a grand declaration that is subsequently explored in the rest of the piece. In this case, the provocative opening line comes from one of the great minds in the history of Western philosophy, and also one of the most quotable. His thesis is hard to disagree with: ignorance is understandable in people who’ve never had access to education or the world of ideas, but is a dark stain when it occurs among people of means.

In the opening paragraph, Schopenhauer continued:

“The poor man is restrained by poverty and need: labor occupies his thoughts, and takes the place of knowledge. But rich men who are ignorant live for their lusts only…and they can also be reproached for not having used wealth and leisure for that which gives them their greatest value.”

For more than 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature, go to www.GreatOpeningLines.com.

This Week’s Puzzler

On September 28, 1891, this man died at age 72 in New York City. While he is now considered one of America’s greatest novelists, at his death he was regarded as a minor American writer, best known for Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life (1846). The book was an account of his experiences in the South Pacific after he jumped ship from a New England whaling vessel. Typee was successful enough to warrant an 1847 sequel: Omoo: A Narrative Adventure of Life in the South Seas.

These two books were the most successful during his lifetime. They were followed by more than a dozen later works, none of which achieved commercial success or critical acclaim. At his death in 1891, all of his books were out of print and he was flirting with obscurity. His death was briefly mentioned in The New York Times, but the paper misspelled the title of the novel that is now indelibly associated with his name.

In 1917, critic Carl Van Doren wrote an article praising him and his work. That article, combined with a 1919 centenary celebration of his birth, revived interest in the little-remembered author. Six years later, in 1923, D. H. Lawrence also praised the man and his works, especially his 1851 adventure novel that is now regarded as one of America’s greatest literary works.

In 2014, English critic Robert McCrum hailed the 1851 book as “the supreme American novel,” ranking it number 17 on his list of history’s 100 greatest novels. About it, he wrote: “It is a literary performance that is exhilarating, extraordinary, sometimes exasperating and, towards its apocalyptic climax, unputdownable.” And, parenthetically, the novel also began with one of literary history’s greatest opening lines.

In his works, this Week’s Mystery Man offered memorable observations on countless topics. In his 1854 short story “Poor Man’s Pudding,” for example, the narrator says:

Who is this man? What is the title of the 1851 novel? What was the opening line? And how was the title misspelled by The New York Times in 1891? (Answers below)

Can the Rich Understand the Poor?

Since ancient times, observers of the human condition have divided people into the Rich and the Poor, but nobody has ever expressed the bifurcation better than the legendary Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, who put the following words into the mouth of Don Quixote’s sidekick, Sancho Panza:

Because Cervantes was writing in Spanish, he never actually employed the haves and have-nots expression. Instead, his classic novel used the terms el tener and el no tener—literally “the having” and “the not having.” Technically speaking, then, credit for haves and have-nots belongs to the English writer Peter Motteux (1633-1718), who provided the first English translation of Don Quixote in 1700.

Another popular practice throughout history is rich people offering opinions about the traits and habits of the poor. Over the centuries, their observations have been so off-base—or so self-serving—that numerous writers have seriously questioned the ability of rich people to understand poor people.

Our Mystery Man was also questioning the pronouncements of the rich in this week’s Puzzler quotation when the narrator of “Poor Man’s Pudding” eloquently challenged the legitimacy of “most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor” by people of means.

The first thoughts on this week’s theme go back to antiquity, and one of the earliest comes from the 8th century B.C., when the Greek poet Hesiod wrote:

“Work is no disgrace: it is idleness which is a disgrace…. If you work, the idle will soon envy you as you grow rich, for fame and renown attend on wealth.”

Another comes from Scripture:

A few centuries later, at the height of the Holy Roman Empire, many upper class Romans were fond of describing wealth as proof of virtue and poverty as evidence of vice. Most comments ran something like this: if you worked hard and persevered, you prospered; if you were poor, you must have lacked those virtues—or simply been lazy.

If all this sounds a bit like circular logic, it is. It’s also an example of what psychologists call the just-world fallacy, the belief that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get (for more on the subject, go here). This kind of thinking provides the wealthy with an easy narrative: “I’m rich because I’m hard-working and industrious; you’re not rich because you aren’t.

The problem is, we don’t live in a just world. In addition, the just-world lens lets the rich grossly oversimplify a highly complex reality—one in which the laziest and least deserving people are often comfortably perched at the top of the socioeconomic ladder, while the hardest working and most deserving people are often at the bottom.

Two of my favorite writers have commented on this phenomenon:

A few years later, in a 1996 Esquire magazine article titled “Searching for Deliverance,” Norman Mailer expressed a similar thought:

“To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there’s more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of welfare [recipients].”

As to my original question, “Can the Rich Understand the Poor,” the answer is unequivocally, “Yes!” All you have to do is look at four of my favorite historical figures: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy.

From the day they were born, all four lived lives not merely of comfort, but of affluence and privilege. They never experienced economic anxiety. Or food insecurity. They never wondered where their next dollar was coming from. They never worried about making tuition payments. Or buying new clothes for school. And they never shivered in a cold bed on a frigid winter evening because the gas or electric bills weren’t paid.

Given all of this, you might think they’d never be able to grasp what life was like on the other end of the socioeconomic scale. And yet, all four showed that wealth does not preclude empathy if people possess a social consciousness, the trait of empathy, and a sincere belief in the religious injunction to love our neighbors as ourselves.

If the Roosevelts and the Kennedy brothers demonstrated that the wealthy can indeed understand the poor, they don’t appear to be significant role models for the majority of wealthy people today. If anything, a case could be made that today’s tycoons are probably closer in their thinking to the word’s richest man, Elon Musk, who wrote in a December 2024 post on X:

“In most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie. It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.”

This is a grossly ignorant statement, and an insult to every homeless veteran with PTSD, every homeless teen fleeing an abusive situation, every senior citizen priced out of housing by hefty price hikes, and every family made homeless by staggering medical bills. His caricature is a classic example of Solzhenitsyn’s famous remark about a man who’s warm being unable to understand someone who’s cold. When we ask the question “Does this man understand poor people,” the answer is an unequivocal “No!”

While the rich taking care of themselves at the expense of the poor appears to be in ascendancy today, that may not be the case in the future. As the American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote in The Age of Reform (1955):

So, if we take a cyclical view of history, we can expect business and political leaders to become more concerned about the plight of the poor in a few decades. It’s a hopeful thought, at least for me, and maybe for you as well.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I have a very active dream life, and a few nights ago I had a dream that may have been inspired by Hofstadter’s observation.

In my dream, Elon Musk was waiting to see me when I arrived at my swanky office in the Prudential Tower in Boston (you know, that striking glass-and-aluminum skyscraper designed by I. M. Pei). His presence came as no surprise to me, and in greeting him, I said, “Good to see you, Mr. Musk. I’ve been expecting you.”

Once seated, he said: “Dr. Mardy, all my life, I’ve been self-absorbed and so wrapped up in myself and my pursuits that I feel as if I’ve cut myself off from other people. One of my kids recently said I didn’t have an understanding bone in my entire body, and I think she may be right. Can you help me become a more understanding person?”

“I’d be happy to,” I said, adding “It’s actually easier than you might think.” To understand other people, I continued, all that’s necessary is to make a sincere effort to see things from their perspective. And then, after citing a few variations on the saying about “walking in another person’s shoes,” I pasted a yellow sticky note on the sleeve of his sport coat. On it was a saying from Clarence Darrow:

“The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place.”

It was as if I’d given him a special gift. After reading it, he giddily clapped his two hands in front of him, much like the comedian Mike Myers did in his impersonations of Musk on Saturday Night Live. It was refreshing to see this famous figure behaving like such an eager student, so I continued pasting quotation-laced sticky notes on the sleeves of his coat. He read each one with an enthusiasm bordering on glee:

“To understand another human being you must gain some insight into the conditions which made him what he is.” — Margaret Bourke-White

“For that is one of the best things about love: the feeling of being wrapped, like a gift, in understanding.” — Anatole Broyard

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” — John Steinbeck

When I said, “I believe that’s enough for today,” he protested. “No! More! More! I want more!” So I continued:

“For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity.” — Charlotte Brontë

“When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours?” — Franz Kafka

This pattern continued until he said, “Okay, I think I have enough now!” After thanking me profusely for my help, he said, “I used to think success was about achieving wealth and power, but I now believe it’s about helping build a better world for others.” As we parted ways, I complimented him on the great personal gains he’d made in such a short time—and then I woke up.

Usually, I forget my dreams shortly after I get into the activities of the day, but this one has stayed with me—and I thought it would be fun to share it with you. And if, while reading about my nocturnal counseling session, you found yourself thinking, “Mardy, your tale reflected a naïveté I didn’t expect from you!” I can only reply:

“Hey, a man can dream, can’t he?”

Now the ball is in your court. How would you answer the question, “Can the rich understand the poor?” Before doing anything, though, let your thinking be stimulated by these additional quotations on this week’s theme:

• One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. — Jane Austen

• When too few have too much, and too many have too little, the stage is set for the decline of us all. — Blayney Colmore

• The greatest and the most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least—the privilege of making them happy. — Charles Caleb Colton

• There are two kinds of people in the world: those who live poor on a lot and those who live rich on a little. — Marcelene Cox

• The rich are never threatened by the poor—they do not notice them. — Marie de France

• Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him. — Erich Fromm

• One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically need a telescope. — Molly Ivins

• If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool. — Carl Jung

• It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocket-book often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

• The trouble is that rich people, well-to-do people, very often don't really know who the poor are; and that is why we can forgive them, for knowledge can only lead to love, and love to service. And so, if they are not touched by them, it's because they do not know them. — Mother Teresa

For source information on these quotations and many others on the theme of RICH & POOR, go here. For quotations on UNDERSTANDING OTHERS, go here.

Cartoon of the Week:

If I had to summarize the message of this week’s cartoon, it would go something like this. While many people harshly judge the poor or homeless for begging, they accept as normal the ways in which the wealthy “beg” through advertising campaigns, investor pitches, and lobbying activities. According to Chesterton, when the wealthy do it, begging is a sophisticated and polished activity that is based not on need, but on greed. This provocative cartoon forces us to stop and think about why we regard one type of begging as offensive, and not the other.

Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (spelled Mobie Dick by The New York Times in 1891). The opening words are “Call me Ishmael.”

Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week:

Thanks for joining me again this week. See you next Sunday morning, when the theme will be “The Power of Example.”

Mardy Grothe

Websites: www.drmardy.com and www.GreatOpeningLines.com

Regarding My Lifelong Love of Quotations: A Personal Note