To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
Interpretation
Desiring wealth may require a certain lack of wisdom or understanding about its true value.
Gilbert K. Chesterton's quote suggests an ironic observation about money and intelligence. It implies that the pursuit of wealth can lead individuals into foolishness, as they may focus solely on material gain without recognizing its potential pitfalls or the deeper values in life. The cleverness needed to accumulate wealth often comes at the expense of wisdom, as those who desire money may overlook more meaningful pursuits.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of wealth and happiness.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
Attend well to your character, and your reputation will look out for itself.
Like a beautiful flower that is colorful but has no fragrance, even well spoken words bear no fruit in one who does not put them into practice.
The cynic thinks that he is being practical and that the hopeful person is not. It is actually the other way around. Cynicism is paralyzing, while the naΓ―ve person tries what the cynic says is impossible and sometimes succeeds.
If you overesteem great men, people become powerless. If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal. The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire, and creates confusion in those who think that they know. Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.
It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve your sanity.
Adaptability is being able to adjust to any situation at any given time.
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