Wealth & Money Quote by James Cash Penney

Penney’s line is a quiet flex disguised as humility: he’s a businessman praising “men of deeds” over “men of wealth,” even as he built an empire that made him wealthy. That tension is the point. In early 20th-century America, retail titans had to justify accumulation in moral terms. Saying inspiration comes from action, not money, lets Penney position himself as a disciple of work ethic rather than a beneficiary of capitalism’s winners’ circle.

The intent is reputational and managerial. It’s a message aimed at employees, customers, and peers: don’t worship the balance sheet, worship the grind. “Men of deeds” implies competence, risk, initiative, and responsibility - virtues that translate directly into store culture and corporate mythology. It’s also a subtle rebuke of inherited privilege. Wealth can be static, accidental, or unearned; deeds are legible, narratable, and therefore marketable. You can’t build a brand around “I was born rich,” but you can build one around “we earned this.”

The subtext carries Protestant-inflected moral accounting: money is acceptable only if it’s the receipt for effort. Penney isn’t rejecting wealth; he’s laundering it through virtue. Coming from a figure associated with middle-American retail, the quote functions like a mission statement for an aspirational consumer class: buy into a world where character, not pedigree, is the real currency. It’s capitalism asking to be admired for its meritocracy, not questioned for its outcomes.