There are many things we pass on to our future generations, from family treasures to stories and traditions. Generational wealth is measured by what one generation passes on to the next. Fortune defines it as stocks, bonds, real estate, businesses, or even cash. But other people look at it differently as these generational wealth quotes show.

Pondering the wealth we pass on to our children takes some thought. Wealth is much more than just physical assets like money and stocks. 

To help you think about generational wealth, I’ve put together a list of quotes. These generational wealth quotes can teach us more about how we’re influencing those who will come after us, especially in terms of these categories: 

• Generational wealth
• Generating vast wealth
• Health 
• Rich natural wealth
• Greed  
• How to create generational wealth
• Wealth and poverty 
• Wealth creation for all generations 

Take some time out of your day to consider how you’re affecting the next generation. What more can you do to ensure the generational wealth you pass on is priceless?  

Quotes About Generational Wealth

1. “It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.” ― Ann Landers
2. “It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.” —Robert Kiyosaki
3. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”  —Warren Buffett
4. “You are called to create generational wealth. Awaken and stop listening to those who would keep you small. Stop allowing fear and self-doubt to determine your actions. You are born for more. RISE!” —Anonymous 
5. “The first wealth is health.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
6. “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
7. “Show your kids that needs and wants are two different things. The best way to teach our kids to be smart consumers – and savvy savers – is to model good behavior for them.” —Jean Chatzky
8. “Be the first millionaire in your family but make sure you’re not the last.” —Unknown
9. “The safest wealth is the poverty of needs.” —Franz Werfel 
10. “Fame and wealth without wisdom are unsafe possessions.” —Democritus 
11. “Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” —Anne Frank

Quotes About How to Generate Vast Wealth

1. “If you’d like to gain a new understanding of generational wealth, get into gardening.” —Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. 
2. “If you don’t get serious about your money, you will never have serious money.” —Grant Cardone
3. “Human beings have been smart enough to turn nature to their ends, generate vast wealth for themselves, and double their average life span. But are they smart enough to solve the problems of the 21st century?” —Thomas Homer-Dixon
4. “We must keep ourselves busy with finding ways to generate wealth for our generations to come and work to pass down things to our children for them to pass down to their children.” —T.I. 
5. “It’s not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.” —Margaret Thatcher 
6. “The trouble for most people is they don’t decide to get wealthy, they just dream about it.” —Michael Masters 
7. “Energy and imagination are the springboards to wealth creation.” —Brian Tracy 
8. “Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.”—Wayne Dyer
9. “I take pride in the creation of my wealth, in its existence and in the uses to which it has been and is being put.” —Paul Getty 
10. “Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.” —Henry Ford
11. “The courage to press on regardless – regardless of whether we face calm seas or rough seas, and especially when the market storms howl around us – is the quintessential attribute of the successful investor.”—John C. Bogle

Insightful Quotes About Health and Wealth

1. “He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.” —Thomas Carlyle
2. “The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine.” —Hippocrates
3. “Health is a priceless wealth. Invest while you can.” —Bryant McGill
4. “Good health is a crown on the head of a well person that only a sick person can see.” —Rohit Sharma
5. “Today, be thankful and think how rich you are. Your family is priceless, your time is gold, and your health is wealth.” —Zig Ziglar
6. “All the money in the world can’t buy you back good health.” —Reba McEntire
7. “Health is like money; we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.” —Josh Billings
8. “Eating healthy can cost you money, but eating unhealthy can cost you your life.” —Anonymous
9. “Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed but the least envied.” —Charles Caleb Colton
10. “When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot become manifest, strength cannot be exerted, wealth is useless, and the reason is powerless.” —Herophilos 
11. “Happiness lies, first of all, in health.” —George William Curtis
12. “Three things in life—your health, your mission, and the people you love. That’s it.” —Naval Ravikant
13. “Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.” —Albert Schweitzer
14. “Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.” —Buddha

Related Article: 200 Quotes About Money and Personal Finance

What do you think the generational wealth of the present generation is? How will you generate wealth for the future? Keep these questions in mind as you continue reading these generational wealth quotes.

Quotes About Rich Natural Wealth 

1. “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” —Albert Einstein
2. “He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” —Socrates
3. “The most valuable wealth of a man is his knowledge, which cannot be destroyed; all other riches that he has gained are not considered to be wealth at all.” —Thiruvalluvar
4. “The distribution of wealth is just as important as its creation.” —William Randolph Hearst
5. “Free enterprise is essentially a formula not just for wealth creation, but for life satisfaction.” —Arthur C. Brooks
6. “If we cannot provide excellent educational opportunities to all children, safe communities, quality health coverage, or robust and fair avenues towards wealth creation, then our nation will increasingly be in peril.” —Cory Booker
7. “Many roads lead to wealth, and most of them are dirty.” —Peter Rosegger
8. “The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” —Mahatma Gandhi 
9. “If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according to what others think, you will never be rich.” —Seneca

More Quotes About Generational Wealth

1. “Healing yourself is generational wealth.” —Anonymous 
2. “A life of luxury sounds nice but generational wealth sounds better.” —Anonymous 
3. “Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.” —Ayn Rand
4. “Investing is for wealth preservation, not wealth creation, so first you have to make wealth.” —James Altucher
5. “The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.” —Epicurus 
6. “Infinitely more important than sharing one’s material wealth is sharing the wealth of ourselves—our time and energy, our passion and commitment, and, above all, our love.” —William E. Simon 
7. “And, that wealth is not measured in dollar and cents but, instead, is measured in caring, kindness, and the appreciation and admiration of others who you meet and deal with in everyday life.” —Byron Pulsifer 
8. “It is not great wealth in a few individuals that proves a country is prosperous, but great general wealth evenly distributed among the people.” —Victoria Woodhull 

Keep reading for more generational wealth quotes you can use to talk to future generations about what comes next. 

Quotes about Wealth and Greed

1. “You aren’t wealthy until you have something money can’t buy.” —Garth Brooks
2. “For some, worldly riches are gained at the price of lost friends and broken families. For others, fortune remains forever elusive, while families remain precariously intact. For most, we remain forever in one of two categories – either poor, seeking to become wealthy or wealthy, seeking always to rediscover the happiness we had while we were poor.” —Jim Rohn
3. “Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.” —George Eliot
4. “Don’t confuse wealth with success.” —H. Jackson Brown Jr. 
5. “A man’s true wealth is the good he does in the world.” —Kahlil Gibran
6. “We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson 
7. “Take the fare from him who is wealthy, and let pass him who is poor.” —Muata Ashby
8. “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” —Confucious 
9. “Wealth and poverty do not lie in a man’s estate, but in men’s souls.” —Antisthenes
10. “Take heed, and beware of covetousness; for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” —Luke
11. “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” —Erich Fromm
12. “There is a fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.” —Maya Angelou

Inspiring Quotes About How to Create Generational Wealth

1. “Today, a person in essence takes his wealth from society just for the duration of his or her lifetime. The next generation has to create it anew.” —Mikhail Khodorkovsky
2. “Wealth can only be accumulated by the earnings of industry and the savings of frugality.” —John Tyler 
3. “The production of wealth is the result of agreement between labor and capital, between employer and employed. Its distribution, therefore, will follow the law of its creation, or great injustice will be done.” —Leland Stanford
4. “We've had the most massive creation of wealth for people a lot younger than those who formerly got wealth in the history of the world. The world is full of young people who really want to get rich, and when I left school nobody thought it was a reasonable possibility.” —Charlie Munger
5. “The real measure of our wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.” —John Henry Jowett
6. “God gave us wealth, not that we should be hoarders but dispensers.” —Thomas Manton

Related Article: 90 Quotes About Marriage and Money

Family wealth and personal wealth are two different things. How do you define family wealth and thinking about making money? 

Thoughtful Quotes About Wealth and Poverty 

1. “Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson 
2. “It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.” —C.C. Colton 
3. “Wealth is no mark of God’s favour. Poverty is no mark of God’s displeasure.” —J.C. Ryle
4. “I have about concluded that wealth is a state of mind, and that anyone can acquire a wealthy state of mind by thinking rich thoughts.” —Edward Young
5. “The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.” —Miguel de Cervantes 
6. “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” —Albert Einstein 

Quotes About Wealth Creation for All Generations 

1. “Build something that outlives you.” —Anonymous
2. “Create your legacy, and pass the baton.” —Billie Jean King
3. “Each generation will reap what the former generation has sown.” —proverb
4. “Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” —Henry David Thoreau 
5. “The only wealth in this world is children, more than all the money, power on earth.” —Mario Puzo 
6. “The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” —Plato 
7. “We must work together to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth, opportunity, and power in our society.” —Nelson Mandela 
8. “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt 

It often takes years to build generational wealth. Keep reading for more generational wealth quotes!

More Quotes About Generational Wealth

1. “Happiness is not the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt 
2. “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” —Winston Churchill
3. “It’s powerfully important that our kids get an education in personal finance. Both from their families and in school.” —Elizabeth Warren
4. “The single biggest difference between financial success and financial failure is how well you manage your money. It’s simple: to master money, you must manage money.” —T. Harv Eker 
5. “I don’t want to leave my kids an inheritance. I want to leave them a legacy.” —Daymond John
6. “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” —John F. Kennedy 
7. “Control your own destiny or someone else will.“ —Jack Welch

Final Thoughts on Quotes About Generational Wealth

Generating wealth for our own generation can be difficult. That’s why it’s even more important to look toward the future, including those generations who will come after us. 

I hope you’ve found these quotes uplifting and insightful when it comes to generational wealth. If you want to hear more on this topic, tune in to the Marriage Kids and Money Podcast. I’d be happy to have another listener who wonders as much as I do about things like generational wealth.

Which of these generational wealth quotes do you agree (or disagree!) with most? How are you building generational wealth as a family?

Please let us know in the comments below.