Wealth & Money Quote by Orson Welles

Welles goes for the jugular with a line that sounds like cocktail-party provocation, then hardens into a diagnosis of how societies launder power. The opening jab - criminals "aren't very amusing" because they're "failures" - flips the usual romance of the outlaw. He isn't scorning crime as sin; he's scorning it as incompetence. The petty thief is boring not because stealing is wrong, but because getting caught is gauche. That’s a brutal, very Wellesan refusal of moral melodrama.

The real point arrives with the pivot: "Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals". Here the quote exposes criminality as an administrative label, not a stable category. The difference between "fraud" and "finance", between "extortion" and "fees", is often decided by who can hire the best lawyers, shape legislation, or simply operate at a scale big enough to be treated as indispensable. The line lands because it doesn’t ask you to sympathize with criminals; it asks you to notice how comfortable you are with respectable predation.

Calling it a "class distinction" drags the conversation out of personal ethics and into social machinery: courts, policing priorities, press narratives, and the quiet prestige that attaches to wealth. Coming from an actor-director steeped in the theater of public image, Welles is also winking at performance itself: crime becomes a matter of costume and casting. The street criminal plays the villain; the affluent operator plays the pillar of the community, and the audience applauds.