Wealth & Money Quote by Robert G. Allen

Allen’s line is less self-help slogan than a compact indictment of “average” social judgment: the crowd isn’t merely wrong, it’s structurally incapable of reading ambition without reaching for a comforting story. Each beat is built on a predictable downgrade. Dreaming becomes “crazy” (pathologize the unfamiliar), succeeding becomes “lucky” (deny competence to protect one’s own self-image), wealth becomes “greedy” (moralize what you secretly want). The repetition is the point: whatever you do, the baseline observer will find a way to shrink it to something that costs them nothing to acknowledge.

The subtext is almost combative. “Average man” isn’t a demographic; it’s a psychological type, a stand-in for risk-aversion dressed up as common sense. Allen is writing from, and for, a late-20th-century American achievement culture where aspiration is praised in theory but policed in practice. The quote’s real target is the social friction that hits anyone trying to climb: friends who make jokes, relatives who “worry,” colleagues who call it “getting ideas.” He reframes that friction as evidence you’re on the right track, not a signal to retreat.

“Pay no attention” works rhetorically because it offers a clean escape hatch: you don’t have to litigate every criticism; you can file it under “they don’t understand.” That’s empowering, and slightly dangerous. It fortifies independence, but it can also anesthetize you to legitimate critique. Still, as motivational rhetoric, it’s efficient: it turns envy, disbelief, and moral suspicion into background noise, then hands you a single job - keep moving.