"The thing that differentiates man from animals is money"
About this Quote
Stein’s jab lands because it refuses the comforting story we tell about ourselves. Not language, not art, not empathy - money. It’s a deliberately deflating answer, the kind that swaps the flattering mirror for a cash register. Coming from a modernist who spent her career dismantling “sense” on the page, the line feels like a provocation aimed at bourgeois self-regard: you want a clean definition of humanity? Fine. Here’s your dirty one.
The intent is less zoological than social. Stein is pointing at money as an invention that doesn’t just facilitate exchange; it manufactures hierarchy, abstraction, and a permanent state of measurement. Animals compete, cooperate, even “trade” in rudimentary ways, but money turns survival into accounting. It lets us store power, transfer obligation, and convert almost anything - time, land, labor, intimacy - into a comparable unit. That’s the subtext: human life isn’t merely lived; it’s priced.
Context matters. Stein wrote from inside a rapidly monetizing 20th century: industrial capitalism, war economies, and a Europe where nations were literally cashing human bodies into trenches. Living in Paris among artists and patrons, she also watched culture become a marketplace of reputations and sales. The line reads like a cold-eyed observation from someone surrounded by aesthetic innovation and financial dependence at the same time.
Its sting is in the inversion: money is our proudest proof of “civilization,” and Stein treats it as our most damning tell.
The intent is less zoological than social. Stein is pointing at money as an invention that doesn’t just facilitate exchange; it manufactures hierarchy, abstraction, and a permanent state of measurement. Animals compete, cooperate, even “trade” in rudimentary ways, but money turns survival into accounting. It lets us store power, transfer obligation, and convert almost anything - time, land, labor, intimacy - into a comparable unit. That’s the subtext: human life isn’t merely lived; it’s priced.
Context matters. Stein wrote from inside a rapidly monetizing 20th century: industrial capitalism, war economies, and a Europe where nations were literally cashing human bodies into trenches. Living in Paris among artists and patrons, she also watched culture become a marketplace of reputations and sales. The line reads like a cold-eyed observation from someone surrounded by aesthetic innovation and financial dependence at the same time.
Its sting is in the inversion: money is our proudest proof of “civilization,” and Stein treats it as our most damning tell.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
|---|
More Quotes by Gertrude
Add to List
