"In our time and culture, the battlefield of life is money.

Instead of horses and chariots, guns and fortresses, there are banks, checkbooks, credit cards, mortgages, salaries, the IRS.

But the inner enemies remain the same now as they were in ancient India or feudal Japan: fear, self-deception, vanity, egoism, wishful thinking, tension, and violence."

—Jacob Needleman, from 'Money and the Meaning of Life' (1991)