Quote of the Day: Euripides on Wealth & Money

Our feeds sell youth as a brand: perfect skin under perfect lighting, “day in my life” hustle reels, AI-curated ambition packaged into fifteen seconds. In that fast-twitch digital economy, money looks like the whole story, until a line from an ancient stage cuts through the scroll: “Youth is the best time to be rich, and the best time to be poor.”

The provocation isn’t that wealth matters less when you’re young; it’s that youth multiplies whatever you have. If you’re rich at twenty, resources convert into experience with startling efficiency, travel that changes your map of the world, education that reroutes your trajectory, risks you can afford because your resume and obligations are still light. The “best time” isn’t about luxury; it’s about velocity. Youth turns cash into options.

But Euripides refuses the easy moral that money equals meaning. Youth can also metabolize scarcity. A young body recovers; a young mind improvises. Poverty still hurts, rent is rent, but it doesn’t always harden into despair. Time, energy, and friendship can function as shadow capital, letting you build identity, skills, and resilience before life’s stakes rise. The sting of “not enough” is sometimes softened by the audacity of “not yet.”

That double vision is classic Euripides, the Greek tragedian who made drama out of human psychology, desire, fear, status, and the social pressures that bend people toward choices they barely recognize as their own.

With August’s late-summer restlessness in the air, the practical takeaway is sharp: use youth, yours or someone else’s, with intention. If you have money, spend it on capabilities, not costumes. If you don’t, protect your curiosity and your freedom to pivot; those are the assets that compound long after the algorithm moves on.