The Secret

'Things are not brought into being by thinking about their opposites. Health is never to be obtained by studying disease and thinking about disease; righteousness is not to be promoted by studying sin and thinking about sin; and no-one ever got rich by studying poverty and thinking about poverty.

Medicine as a science of disease has increased disease; religion as a science of sin has promoted sin, and economics as a study of poverty will fill the world with wretchedness and want.

Do not talk about poverty; do not investigate it, or concern yourself with it. Never mind what its causes are; you have nothing to do with them.

What concerns you is the cure.

Do not spend your time in charitable work, or charity movements; all charity tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to eradicate.

I do not say that you should be hard hearted or unkind, and refuse to hear the cry of need; but you must not try to eradicate poverty in any of the conventional ways. Put poverty behind you, and put all that pertains to it behind you, and "make good."

Get rich: that is the best way you can help the poor.'

-Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich (1910)



The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has appointed me to bring good news to the poor.

Isaiah 61:1