32 Quotes About Greed

Greed has long been a powerful force in human society, influencing everything from personal decisions to the broader strokes of history. It's a double-edged sword—driving innovation and progress, yet often at the cost of ethical boundaries and social harmony. This collection of 32 quotes about greed delves into the complexities of this compelling trait, offering insights from a diverse array of thinkers, authors, and leaders. As you explore these reflections, you'll uncover perspectives that challenge, inspire, and provoke thought about the role greed plays in our lives. Whether seen as a flaw or a motivator, greed remains a fascinating aspect of the human condition worthy of contemplation.

1. “When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” - Shirley Chisholm

2. “Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.” - Jon Foreman

3. “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

4. “I was simultaneously elated and depressed, a common enough state of mind these days when people are offered a great deal of money to do something repugnant.” - James Hamilton-Paterson

5. “Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it.” - G.K. Chesterton

6. “It didn´t occur to me until later that there´s another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed.” - Stephen King

7. “Nonetheless, many people, and especially intellectuals, passionately loathe capitalism. As they see it, this ghastly mode of society’s economic organization has brought about nothing but mischief and misery. Men were once happy and prosperous in the good old days preceding the Industrial Revolution. Now under capitalism the immense majority are starving paupers ruthlessly exploited by rugged individualists. For these scoundrels nothing counts but their moneyed interests. They do not produce good and really useful things, but only what will yield the highest profits. They poison bodies with alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and souls and minds with tabloids, lascivious books and silly moving pictures. The “ideological superstructure” of capitalism is a literature of decay and degradation, the burlesque show and the art of striptease, the Hollywood pictures and the detective stories.” - Ludwig Von Mises

8. “Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. ” - John Kenneth Galbraith

9. “Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.” - Samuel Johnson

10. “Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.” - Henry Wallace

11. “The angry men know that this golden age (of fossil fuels) has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings.” - George Monbiot

12. “Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.” - Gustave Flaubert

13. “Political corruption, social greed, and Americanized quasi-socialism can ruin even the most wonderful places. California proved that.” - Tiffany Madison

14. “The Master said, “The gentleman understands what is right, whereas the petty man understands profit.”(Analects 4.16)” - Confucius

15. “The best client is a scared millionaire.” - H.L. Mencken

16. “The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men.” - Ray Bradbury

17. “There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.” - Maya Angelou

18. “Dragon kind was no less cruel than mankind. The Dragon, at least, acted from bestial need rather than bestial greed.”~ A thought by Lessa ~” - Anne McCaffrey

19. “I'm fat because I'm greedy, and if my mind is fat it's because I'm curious.” - Stephen Fry

20. “[I]t is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better; one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself other than venal who weds a rich man rather than a poor, and desires more things in her husband than himself. Assuredly, whomsoever this concupiscence leads into marriage deserves payment rather than affection.” - Héloïse

21. “Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.” - Michael Connelly

22. “he who is greedy is always in want” - Horace

23. “If there is a deity of the kind imagined by votaries of the big mail-order religions such as Christianity and Islam, and if this deity is the creator of all things, then it is responsible for cancer, meningitis, millions of spontaneous abortions everyday, mass killings of people in floods and earthquakes-and too great mountain of other natural evils to list besides. It would also,as the putative designer of human nature, ultimately be responsible or the ubiquitous and unbeatable human propensities for hatred, malice, greed, and all other sources of the cruelty and murder people inflict on each other hourly.” - A.C. Grayling

24. “There," she said, waving her hands at the corridor. The expression of delight on her face was a very bad thing to see."You're wrong! You don't know where your parents are, do you?" she turned and looked at Coraline. "Now," she said, "you're going to stay here for ever and always.” - Neil Gaiman

25. “In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.” - Matt Taibbi

26. “Whatever worldly thing we may covet - zealously striving to obtain and then retain - never seems to bring an end to our desires. Covetousness, envy, jealousy, and greed always escalate into a vicious spiral, as we seek greater and greater gratification but find less and less contentment. . . . Striving to acquire the things of the world not only does not bring lasting happiness and peace, but it drives us to seek more. When "all we've ever wanted" is grounded in the temporal trappings of this world, it is never enough!” - Brent Top

27. “Behold, the Spring has come; the earth has received the embraces of the sun and we shall soon see the results of that love!Every seed is awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land.Yet, hear me, people, we have now to deal with another race – small and feeble when our fathers first met them but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule.They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. The nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all that are in its path.We cannot dwell side by side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that away from us. My brothers, shall we submit or shall we say to them: 'First kill me before you take possession of my land” - Sitting Bull

28. “Bei vielen Menschen [...] vermute ich eine geheime Verfassung, deren virtueller Artikel 1 lautet: "Die Besitzstandswahrung ist unantastbar.” - Joachim Gauck

29. “Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little” - Epicurus

30. “This was the time when the rush for the spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women.” - Émile Zola

31. “Greed is like a dark side of every man, and you could not see it from the appearance of a man, but in the inside the greedy beast already dominating you.” - Steven Eric Chen

32. “Greed applied is prosperity realized". ~R. Alan Woods [2006]” - R. Alan Woods