Wealth & Money Quote by DeWitt Clinton

For a politician, redefining "success" is never just a moral gesture; it is a bid to set the scoreboard. DeWitt Clinton’s line quietly demotes private accumulation and elevates public consequence, a shrewd inversion in an early American culture already flirting with commercial self-making. The phrasing is clean enough to sound like common sense, but it smuggles in a standard that flatters civic ambition: if impact is the metric, then the man who builds institutions, mobilizes coalitions, and leaves infrastructure behind can claim a higher form of achievement than the merchant who simply gets rich.

Clinton’s career gives the subtext teeth. As the driving force behind the Erie Canal, he was the kind of statesman whose legacy could be measured in altered geographies: trade routes rerouted, towns created, fortunes enabled. Calling impact the true measure lets him argue that public works are not vanity projects but moral accounting. It also functions as preemptive defense against the era’s suspicion of political operators. If critics paint him as power-hungry, he reframes ambition as service: judge me by what my actions do to your lives.

The quote’s rhetorical trick is its apparent humility. It disavows wealth while avoiding any real disavowal of power. "Impact on others" can mean altruism, but it can also mean influence, reach, permanence. Clinton makes the politician’s case in one sentence: the public realm is where the largest lives are lived, and history’s verdict should hinge on what you changed, not what you pocketed.