Greed is a powerful emotion that has influenced human behavior throughout history, often driving ambition, desire, and sometimes destruction. Whether viewed as a cautionary tale or a reflection of human nature, quotes about greed offer valuable insights into its impact on our lives and society. In this collection, you’ll find 91 inspiring quotes that explore the many facets of greed—its pitfalls, how it motivates, and the lessons it teaches. Dive in to reflect on this compelling topic and discover perspectives that might change the way you see ambition and desire.
1. “I want an Oompa-Loompa!' screamed Veruca.” - Roald Dahl
2. “There is no wealth but life.” - John Ruskin
3. “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.” - Mahatma Gandhi
4. “Manifest plainness,Embrace simplicity,Reduce selfishness,Have few desires.” - Lao Tzu
5. “We have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics.” - Franklin Delano Roosevelt
6. “Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.” - Voltaire
7. “The Duke of Dunstable had one-way pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of tuppence.” - Wodehouse
8. “Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.” - Frederick Douglass
9. “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” - Socrates
10. “The best is the enemy of good.” - Voltaire
11. “These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the dew began-Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of Man.” - Rudyard Kipling
12. “When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.” - Shirley Chisholm
13. “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
14. “They had battled and bloodied one another, they had kept secrets, broken hearts, lied, betrayed, exiled, they had walked away, said goodbye and sworn it was forever, and somehow, every time, they had mended, they had forgiven, they had survived. Some mistakes could never be fixed - some, but not all. Some people can't be driven away, no matter how hard you try. Some friendships won't break.” - Robin Wasserman
15. “Stealing to eat ain’t criminal—stealing to be rich is.” - Andrew Vachss
16. “I don't wanna take my time going to work, I got a motorcycle and a sleeping bag and ten or fifteen girls. What the hell I wanna go off and go to work for? Work for what? Money? I got all the money in the world. I'm the king, man. I run the underworld, guy. I decide who does what and where they do it at. What am I gonna run around like some teeny bopper somewhere for someone elses money? I make the money man, I roll the nickels. The game is mine. I deal the cards” - Charles Manson
17. “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
18. “Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.” - Jennifer Donnelly
19. “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
20. “There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.” - Samuel Johnson
21. “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
22. “If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.” - Henry Wallace
23. “In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.” - Henry Wallace
24. “Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in soutern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison?” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
25. “Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see -egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be read to fight the enemy you can see.” - Al-Ghazzali
26. “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
27. “Political corruption, social greed, and Americanized quasi-socialism can ruin even the most wonderful places. California proved that.” - Tiffany Madison
28. “The Master said, “If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.” - Confucius
29. “The Master said, “The gentleman does not serve as a vessel.”(Analects 2.12)” - Confucius
30. “There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,Doing more murder in this loathsome world,Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.” - William Shakespeare
31. “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
32. “There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.” - Dorothy L. Sayers
33. “Complacency delivered us into the hands of evil greedy men like Cheney.” - Sonia Rumzi
34. “The main obstacle to further progress on the resource curse is China, and to a lesser extent India.” - George Soros
35. “The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
36. “Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.” - Kurt Vonnegut
37. “Greed is a little bit more than enough.” - Toba Beta
38. “Said will be a little ahead, but done should follow at his heel.” - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
39. “Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.” - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
40. “The God I believe in isn't short on cash, mister.” - Bono
41. “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
42. “Gradually it became known that the new race had a definite purpose, and that purpose was to chart and possess the whole country, regardless of the rights of its earlier inhabitants. Still the old chiefs cautioned their people to be patient, for, said they, the land is vast, both races can live on it, each in their own way. Let us therefore befriend them and trust their friendship. While they reasoned thus, the temptations of graft and self-aggrandizement overtook some of the leaders.” - Charles Alexander (Ohiyesa) Eastman
43. “These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.” - John Muir
44. “There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died.” - Terry Pratchett
45. “You see Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set-up here. The greed part - a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part - watching two guys hitting each other, maybe hurting each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. That's why it works, Carter, because we're all bastards.” - Robert Cormier
46. “I'm fat because I'm greedy, and if my mind is fat it's because I'm curious.” - Stephen Fry
47. “The ego lusts for satisfaction. It has a prideful ferocious appetite for its version of "truth". It is the most challenging aspect to conquer; the cause for most spiritual turmoil.” - T.F. Hodge
48. “I find it odd- the greed of mankind. People only like you for as long as they perceive they can get what they want from you. Or for as long as they perceive you are who they want you to be. But I like people for all of their changing surprises, the thoughts in their heads, the warmth that changes to cold and the cold that changes to warmth... for being human. The rawness of being human delights me.” - C. JoyBell C.
49. “To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)” - Dorothy L. Sayers
50. “And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number.” - H. Rider Haggard
51. “You ever get the feeling the world's filling up with bastards? I do. What I want to know is what happens when all the bastards run out of people to crap on? What happens when all that's left in the world is bastards? . . . The golden rule. Screw unto others before they screw unto you.” - William Hoffman
52. “Marty, my mother used to say "Never get greedy with God." I think what she meant was "Don't dare ask for more if you already have what you need." ” - James Patterson
53. “The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town.” - Michael Connelly
54. “He knows how to market himself well. Nowadays, that's all that seems to count. He's rebellious in a way that appeals to people with vain, shallow taste. So of course he manipulates his audiences with the blessing of his recording company and the financial investors behind his brand.” - Jess C. Scott
55. “Those that much covet are with gain so fond,For what they have not, that which they possessThey scatter and unloose it from their bond,And so, by hoping more, they have but less;Or, gaining more, the profit of excessIs but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.” - William Shakespeare
56. “This was 1990 the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.” - Bill Bryson
57. “[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.” - Aristophanes
58. “A house built on greed cannot long endure.” - Edward Abbey
59. “And the so-called 'political process' is a fraud: Our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interests.” - Edward Abbey
60. “Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch it, but now all that has changed. The law of the jungle rules, the only ideology is greed. Don't let yourself be parted from your weapons, and always travel in pairs or groups, because this is a land of thieves.” - Isabel Allende
61. “You can never have too much money.” - Jess C. Scott
62. “he who is greedy is always in want” - Horace
63. “My heart is hardy, for I have suffered much on the seas and the battlefield: this will be only something more. But a ravenous belly cannot be hid, damn the thing. It gives a world of trouble to men, makes them fit out fleets of ships and scour the barren sea, to bring misery on their enemies.” - W.H.D. Rouse
64. “It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.” - E.A. Bucchianeri
65. “Greed is eternal.” - The Ferrengi Rules of Acquisition 10
66. “If you always try to measure yourself withmoney... well, it's like counting backwards, the more youkeep on, the less you'll have to show for it.” - Steven J. Carroll
67. “My Oneness will stop the machine that overtakes people's minds. Do we really need new clothes, or new cars, or new TVs? Should we really ingest food made from chemicals not of this earth? Should we really give our money to people who don't need it but want it to fill the evil greed inside of their body? No, we don't, but people need me to show them how to be free." Jimmy, "The One” - Teresa Lo
68. “It does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants” - Louisa May Alcott
69. “We are all born to love people and use things. Unfortunately, we grow to love things and use people...” - T. Rafael Cimino
70. “Enttäuschung und Frustration werden [...] alle erleben, die sich wie im Märchen danach sehnen, Glück in einem Schlaraffenland zu finden ... Nur, dass unser Schlaraffenland nicht ein großer Berg von süßem Brei ist ... wir haben andere Fantasien und Bilder von Fülle und Erfülltheit in einem imaginären Schlaraffenland, das nur eben unglücklicherweise niemals dort ist, wo wir tatsächlich leben. Vielmehr leben wir mit der Hoffnung auf ein Glück, das uns das Schicksal irgenwann einmal gewähren müsse. [...] So können wir das Schlaraffenland je nach unserer eigenen Fasson ausgestalten - und wir tun es. Privat und auch gesellschaftlich.Doch sobald wir anfangen, uns mit diesem Glücksmodell anzufreunden, und gespannt darauf warten, wie im Lotto das große Los zu ziehen, werden wir auf einem Weg sein, wo das Glück ganz bestimmt nicht zu uns findet! Wir bleiben hungrig und ungesättigt. Denn geheimnisvollerweise ist das Glück dort, wo wir Bezogenheit leben - selbst in dem unspektatulärsten Tun des Alltags.” - Joachim Gauck
71. “Whenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need.” - Randy Alcorn
72. “She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honour, for love.” - George R.R. Martin
73. “Why can a Grisha possess but one amplifier? I will answer this question instead: What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.” - Leigh Bardugo
74. “The problem: If you've an antique for sale, then, sad to relate, the world isn't your oyster. It's not that easy. Even if somebody gives you the National Gallery, your options are still very, very limited. Okay, you can sell the Old Masters, set up a trust, buy your favorite brewery. But that's strictly it. You're limited by honesty on one hand and law - that hobble of sanity - on the other.” - Jonathan Gash
75. “Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little” - Epicurus
76. “All right people, listen up! If you've got a family back home waiting for you or if you just want to save your own skin, turn around and walk away. Also, women! I have no intention of fighting any women!” - Hiromu Arakawa
77. “Just as sex is a God-given instinct for the prolongation of the human race, so the desire for property as a prolongation of one's ego is a natural right sanctioned by natural law. A person is free on the inside because he can call his soul his own; he is free on the outside because he can call property his own. Internal freedom is based upon the fact that "I am"; external freedom is based on the fact that "I have." But just as the excesses of flesh produce lust, for lust is sex in the wrong place, so there can be a deordination of the desire for property until it becomes greed, avarice, and capitalistic aggression.” - Fulton J. Sheen
78. “I liked this rich lifestyle, but I loved the poor lifestyle better. The less money people had, the less greedy they seemed to be. The people who lived around our flocks seemed to always love everyone around them. Even though they aren’t always happy and can’t always afford the bills, they are still glad to be alive.” - Shannon A Thompson
79. “Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer.” - Joseph Sobran
80. “There are people who are never content, never appeased, forever dissatisfied—who continually look to what escapes them, convincing themselves that if only they could attain that one desire outside of reach they would be happy. It seems almost pointless to give to these people because their eyes immediately shift from the gift to stare miserably at the portion held back. Their wants, demands, expectations, appetites are never satiated, thus they refuse to be happy. And you cannot make them so.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
81. “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
82. “There are men who dig for gold; [Monseigneur Bienvenu] dug for compassion.” - Victor Hugo
83. “There was a time when our greed had not yet surpassed our imaginations as our greatest asset.” - Thomas Warfield
84. “The real problem is I'm greedy. I want complete, utter, unceasing bliss. But I don't want to fall into it either. If happiness were money I wouldn't want to win the lottery. I want to accomplish it, urn it as John Houseman would say. I want it to be an achievement because I want to be in control of my life. I don't want things to happen to me, I want them to happen because of me. Power I want. I want to feel the way I do when I stretch a new canvas and I want to feel that way all the time. the blank canvas fills me with the power of imminent creation. I'm its god an it always bends to my will and when I'm done I know, inside, that it's markedly better than what almost all of my similarly-engaged others can achieve. That's happiness.” - Sergio De La Pava
85. “Pride has traditionally been regarded as the foremost of the Seven Deadly Sins, but it has rather obviously been overtaken by Greed.” - James Carlos Blake
86. “Love is responsible for nearly every kind of insanity in the world though greed, vanity, and pure meanness contribute their portion to general misery.” - P.N. Elrod
87. “Wouldn't it be nice, for once, to find a world which was at peace with itself. No matter how always those few wanted more than others. Those not satisfied with running their own lives but wishing to have power over the lives of the others. Greedy people. Greedy for wealth, or power or both.” - Garry Kilworth
88. “Wars and revolutions and battles, you see, are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.” - Plato
89. “Wealth is neither an ends nor a means, it is a symptom.” - Christopher Dutton
90. “The pain and shame felt are unknown to those with planned vacations. They know not of the tsunami that rescinded the homes, goals, and hopes of its victims—swallowed by the sea of greed.” - John-Talmage Mathis
91. “Lust for possession and greed has ravaged the soul of humanity like a great cancer, metastasizing throughout society in the form of a nouveau post-human, consumer hedonism.” - Bryant McGill
