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Wealth & Money Quote by Imelda Marcos

"If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are"

About this Quote

Wealth, in Imelda Marcos' telling, isn’t money you can count; it’s money so vast it escapes cognition. The line plays like a punchline, but it’s also a defense mechanism dressed up as glamour: if riches can’t be measured, they can’t be audited, questioned, or morally weighed. “If you know how rich you are, you are not rich” flips common sense into a status test. Knowing becomes a kind of poverty; ignorance becomes proof of abundance. It’s an audacious attempt to turn opacity into prestige.

The subtext is more revealing than the logic. Marcos isn’t just bragging; she’s laundering the idea of excess through a myth of innocence. “I am not aware” reads like a soft alibi, a way to imply that any extravagance is accidental, the natural overflow of a life too large for bookkeeping. That posture matters because the Marcos brand, especially Imelda’s, has always depended on the pageantry of abundance: shoes, jewels, spectacle as governance-by-dazzle.

Context sharpens the edge. Imelda Marcos is not merely a celebrity in the pop-culture sense; she’s a global symbol of kleptocratic luxury, inseparable from allegations of massive corruption and the economic devastation of the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos’ rule. In that light, the quote becomes a rhetorical magic trick: it asks the listener to admire the scale while forgetting the source. It’s wealth as fog machine - concealment marketed as magnificence.

Quote Details

TopicWealth
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Marcos, Imelda. (2026, January 15). If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-know-how-rich-you-are-you-are-not-rich-but-142803/

Chicago Style
Marcos, Imelda. "If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-know-how-rich-you-are-you-are-not-rich-but-142803/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If you know how rich you are, you are not rich. But me, I am not aware of the extent of my wealth. That's how rich we are." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-know-how-rich-you-are-you-are-not-rich-but-142803/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.

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Imelda Marcos on wealth, ignorance, and power
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About the Author

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Imelda Marcos (born July 1, 1930) is a Celebrity from Philippines.

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