You think the rich are greedy — and you want wealth

Come, let us hold this belief up to the light, as every belief deserves. You are carrying a belief you have never actually examined — that wealth and corruption are the same; test it as I tested the beliefs handed to me, asking not is it familiar but is it true, and see whether you have generalized the loud, badly-behaved few onto the many quiet honest people of means who never draw your notice; in its sweeping form it does not survive. Money is a tool, and tools take the character of the hand that holds them — neither virtue nor vice but a means that magnifies whatever a person already is; the greedy grow greedier with it and the generous more able to give, and there are grasping poor and honest rich, so the fear that wealth will corrupt you confuses the tool with the hand. And resolve to become a wealthy person of the kind you would respect — not sabotaging your honest wanting, but aiming to build wealth honestly and hold it well, becoming in your own life the proof that money and integrity can share a house, which dissolves the recoil, for you move now toward someone you would respect. Where did you first learn that having money and being good were opposed?