PORTUGUESE PROVERB

The proverb advises that better than having money is having the friends and contacts with the people who have a lot of money as you can then get more. This is even an adage in modern democratic political campaign fundraising.

No ally is perfect and there are always some disagreements with the best allies. But the alliance is worth the occasional problem of faults with an ally.

In modern politics, knowledge of the wisdom of this proverb, tries to spin situations, and intimidate others from overt criticism. When a President is attacked by many, it encourages even more attacks.

This proverb is a succinct statement of one governmental philosophy of coping with poverty and hardship. It is often uttered when compassion takes the form of intangibles, prayer, advice, training, and search for root causes.

The mal-distribution of resource problem is common in most societies.

There is a conceptually similar African proverb where the animals change. See {588445}.

This is the negative way of stating the Seneca quotation {642436}.

In contemporary American terms this notion is usually couched in terms of all consumers paying higher prices because of credit card frauds, or all airline travelers must submit to searches because of the terrorists.