Top 10 Wealth Quotes of 2011

From the WSJ's The Wealth Report blog:

Yale University just released its top 10 quotes of the year. The rich, as is their wont, held a disproportionate share of the top.

The number one, two and three quotes were all about the rich, or more specifically, about the anti-rich. They were, in order:

1. “We are the 99 percent.” — slogan of Occupy movement.

2. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” — U.S. Sen. candidate Elizabeth Warren, speaking in Andover, Mass., in August.

3. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.” — Billionaire Warren Buffett, in a New York Times op-ed on Aug. 15.

As a full-time Wealth Watcher, I spotted some other quotes that should rank right up there. And not all were anti-rich.

To round out the top 10, here are seven of  my favorites from this year’s Wealth Report:
4 – “He’s a wealthy man, a very wealthy man. If you have a half a million-dollar purchase from Tiffany’s, you’re not a middle-class American.” — Mitt Romney (who has a net worth of $160 million-plus on lesser millionaire Newt Gingrich)

5 – “Rather than assume that the wealthy are a monolithic, selfish and unfeeling lot who must be subjugated by the force of the state, set a tone that encourages people of good will to meet in the middle.” — Leon Cooperman, open letter to President Obama....MORE