"When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money"
About this Quote
The intent is less to shame greed than to expose the performance around it. “Principle” becomes a social deodorant, a way to keep one’s self-image clean while pursuing the same material outcome. Hubbard understands that people rarely lie to others as much as they lie to themselves, and the quote’s bluntness mirrors the blunt instrument of self-deception.
Context matters: Hubbard wrote in an era of rapid commercialization, wage labor fights, and boosterish rhetoric about virtue and hard work. In that world, money wasn’t just money; it was status, security, and proof you’d “made it.” Calling it “principle” let people elevate a dispute into a moral crusade, recruiting sympathy and dodging the stigma of seeming petty.
It still lands because the mechanism hasn’t changed. We rename financial motives as “fairness,” “respect,” “policy,” “values.” Hubbard’s joke isn’t that principles are fake; it’s that they’re often drafted after the fact, hired as legal counsel for desire.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Abe Martin's Sayings and Sketches (Kin Hubbard, 1915)
Evidence: When a fellow says, "It hain't the money, but th' principle o' the thing," it's th' money.. This appears to be an Abe Martin aphorism by Kin Hubbard. I located a *primary-source scan* listed on Wikimedia Commons as the 1915 book "Abe Martin's Sayings and Sketches" (Commons metadata cites a HathiTrust source). However, I was not able to open the actual PDF file content in this environment due to a fetch error (so I cannot extract the exact page number from the scan itself). Multiple secondary references conflict, often citing later reprints/collections such as "Hoss Sense and Nonsense" (1926) or attributing it to "The Indianapolis News" / 1916 volumes; those are plausible later appearances, but not necessarily the earliest printing. What I can verify reliably from a primary-source *catalog/scan record* is that a 1915 Hubbard book exists under this title and is plausibly the earliest book appearance. To conclusively answer "FIRST published" with a page number, the next step would be to open the 1915 scan (via HathiTrust or another viewer) and search within it for the line, then record the exact page where it appears; if absent, then the first appearance is more likely in the syndicated newspaper feature "Abe Martin" / "Abe Martin Says" (Indianapolis News / syndication) prior to 1915. Other candidates (1) Humorous Wit (Djamel Ouis, 2020) compilation95.0% ... Kin Hubbard When a fellow says , " It ain't the money but the principle of the thing , " it's the money . Kin Hub... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hubbard, Kin. (2026, March 1). When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-a-fellow-says-it-aint-the-money-but-the-15791/
Chicago Style
Hubbard, Kin. "When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money." FixQuotes. March 1, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-a-fellow-says-it-aint-the-money-but-the-15791/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money." FixQuotes, 1 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-a-fellow-says-it-aint-the-money-but-the-15791/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2026.
