Wealth & Money Quote by Robert G. Ingersoll

Ingersoll’s line lands like a courtroom cross-examination: the “rich man” assumes he’s the sovereign, but the evidence points to a quieter ruler - the pile of assets that dictates his schedule, his politics, even his sense of self. The phrasing flips the expected hierarchy with a clean, almost legalistic symmetry: subject becomes object, owner becomes owned. It’s not just a moral jab at greed; it’s a claim about captivity disguised as success.

The specific intent is corrective and democratic. Ingersoll, a famously freethinking public orator of the Gilded Age, is taking aim at the era’s emerging capitalist aristocracy. Post-Civil War America was learning to worship “property” as virtue and security, while labor unrest, monopolies, and spectacular inequality made that worship look increasingly like a civic religion. By calling wealth a form of possession, he undercuts the sanctity of ownership without needing to sermonize. He makes the rich man pitiable rather than enviable - a shrewd rhetorical move in a culture that prizes aspiration.

The subtext is psychological: property demands maintenance, defense, optimization. It pulls a person into paranoia (fear of loss), performative status (fear of slipping), and political self-interest (fear of redistribution). “Own” becomes less a right than a burdened relationship, where the supposed beneficiary must continually justify his holdings. Ingersoll isn’t arguing against having things; he’s warning that in a society organized around accumulation, even the winners can end up living like employees of their own stuff.