Daily Inspiration Quote by Don Marquis

Money isn’t just useful, Marquis suggests; it’s chemically persuasive. “There is nothing so habit-forming as money” reads like a wry public-service announcement from an era when American life was being rewired by mass consumerism, advertising, and the rising prestige of “making it.” As a journalist with a satirist’s ear, Marquis frames wealth not as a neutral tool but as a compulsion: once you’ve had it, you don’t simply enjoy it, you start needing it.

The line works because it borrows the language of vice. “Habit-forming” is what people said about cigarettes, patent medicines, and other pleasures sold as innocuous. Marquis smuggles moral critique into a clinical phrase, treating money like a substance that changes behavior over time. The joke is that society pretends money is the responsible craving. We’ll shame people for indulgence, but we’ll applaud the hunger that keeps them clocking in, climbing, hoarding.

Subtextually, it’s also about anxiety. Money’s “habit” isn’t only the thrill of acquisition; it’s the dependence that follows. Once your life expands to fit a certain income, the fear of losing it becomes its own discipline. Marquis’ cynicism lands because it punctures the comforting myth that wealth brings freedom. Instead, he implies, it creates routines, appetites, and new forms of captivity - the kind you call “ambition” when it looks respectable.