Karl Marx. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.”

“The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public-house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save — the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour — your capital.

The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life — the greater is the store of your estranged being.

Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power — all this it can appropriate for you — it can buy all this for you: it is the true endowment. ”