Greed quotes
635 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside greed — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Our expensive welfare state is fueled by the destructive notion that 'greed' is when you want to keep your own money but 'compassion' is when you want to take somebody else's."
"If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him."
"Be fearful when there is greed and be greedy when there is fear."
"Throughout most of our history, nothing - not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons - has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed."
"The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment's hesitation to crush beauty and life."
"Greed's worst point is its ingratitude."
"Greed has poisoned men's souls."
"There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it."
"White folks' greed runs a world in need."
"It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get."
"Throw away profit and greed, and there won't be any thieves."
"Love of the simple is all that I need, I've no time for schism or lovers of greed."
"The dull, purblind folly of the very rich men, their greed and arrogance, and the corruption in business and politics, have tended to produce a very unhealthy condition."
"It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed."
"He was seized and dragged off to King Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, "A spy upon your insatiable greed.""
"We [Americans] have to get beyond the greed-run-amok. We have to get beyond indifference to the poor and working people. We have to get beyond polarized politics."
"Let us work without desire for name or fame or rule over others. Let us be free from the triple bonds of lust, greed of gain, and anger. And this truth is with us!"
"The evil in our desires typically does not lie in what we want, but that we want it too much."
"The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself."
"Unrestrained greed means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers."
