Explanation

I have finally gotten around to reading Atlas Shrugged which is supposedly Ayn Rand's (my favorite author) crowing achievement. I have to say, one third of the way through it, I am impressed...

Money Diatribe

Money is only a tool. it will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. it will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has not concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgement , ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the chats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money.

-Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged