Is (the love of) “Money is the root of all evil” accurate?

“Money is the root of all evil” is an often trotted out misquote. I suspect the people who say this phrase the most are those that do not have any money.

As one of my mentors said, “If money was the root of all evil, the devil would provide you an endless supply”.

How about the full quote, “The love of money is the root of all evil”? If we examine the extreme case of “love” of the money meaning pursuing money to the detriment of all other things, then yes it could be evil.

If you “hate”* money, then you will avoid it. (Can we all name someone we know who hates money?)

However, if we look at the case of pursuing money because of what it is (medium of exchange) and what it provides (i.e. converting once asset (e.g. time) into another (food/shelter/…)) then it can not be wrong. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t unethical (i.e. evil) means of pursuing it (theft, fraud etc) but it doesn’t make the pursuit of it in itself evil.

Once we can get past the mindset that money is evil, than we have a chance at accumulating some. The next step after accumulating some is to convert excess in to wealth. But that is a topic for another post.

*Yes, love and hate are not opposite sides of the same coin but rather the positive and negative versions of the same emotion…