Wealth & Money Quote by Roger Babson

Babson is selling a kind of recession-proof identity: the self as the one asset class that can’t be wiped out by fire, inflation, or a bad run on the banks. The line reads like plain advice, but it’s really a moral hedge against modern volatility. By putting “property” and “money” on the same fragile shelf, he punctures the early-20th-century faith that progress, markets, and ownership automatically equal security. What survives, he argues, is not a ledger but a person.

The craft is in the cadence and the contrast. He starts with disaster scenarios - destruction, devaluation - then pivots to a tidy list of internal goods: “character, health, knowledge and good judgement.” The commas function like a portfolio allocation, implying balance and diversification, but in virtues rather than securities. “Always be in demand” borrows the language of the marketplace to make morality sound practical. He’s not asking you to reject capitalism; he’s recasting virtue as the ultimate currency.

Context matters. Babson lived through panics, World War I, the Roaring Twenties, and the Great Depression - eras when fortunes evaporated and certainty became a luxury. As an educator (and, historically, a businessman steeped in economic forecasting), he’s preaching resilience over optimism: train what can’t be confiscated. The subtext is gently disciplinary: if you’re broke, the solution isn’t just better luck or better policies, it’s better preparation. In a culture obsessed with accumulation, Babson offers a counter-status symbol: competence that holds its value when everything else doesn’t.