Quotes About Greed

The matriarchal society 1300 years ago in Egypt was a peaceful society; that's where you had no war for thousands of years! When they switched to patriarchal society, when the male energy ruled, we became obsessed with the greed. Now we are in this time of intense greed!

If we didn't have greed, market economies wouldn't be as innovative as they are. But in my view, greed has to be contained by the fear of losses, so there has to be a system where, if you take too much risk, you go into bankruptcy. You don't systematically bail out people who take excessive risks.

One cannot completely get rid of the six passions: lust, anger, greed, and the like. Therefore one should direct them to God. If you must have desire and greed, then you should desire love of God and be greedy to attain Him.

Even without love, I can live fine alone. It's not like I've always had what I wanted. In my life not even once... I was never selfish nor full of greed. The things I want to do, the things I want, the things I wish for... have I ever even had any of those, for at least once in my whole life? I can live fine without love. I will find a way to survive. Dying is hell. Why is living supposed to be hell?

I really feel like if everyone listened to their angels the world which shift. We wouldn't see any kind of greed or competition - it would really be the world of kindness .

What are we to think of the shortsightedness of the great mass of people who are content to do nothing about it, and even worse, the greed or venality of the rich and powerful who deliberately bar the way to human survival?

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion and elimination of ignorance, selfishness and greed.

Greed often finds more pleasure in taking from others than in giving to itself.

Sail on, sail on, o' might Ship of State. To the shores of need, past the reefs of greed, through the squalls of hate. Sail on, sail on, sail on.

There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontent. And there is no greater disaster than greed.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'

Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some ... darker place.

We all seem to be about aggression and greed. It's a massive pressure that affects us all.

Whatever posessions and objects of its desires the lower self may obtain, it hangs on to them, refusing to let them go out of greed for more, or out of fear of poverty and need.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, laid off over 100,000 employees. His reward? When he retired from GE, he received a golden parachute of over $400 million dollars. This is the kind of corporate greed and irresponsibility that is destroying the middle class and must be ended.

There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.

Greed is the assumption that it is all for my consumption.

One side of service is serving, but the other side is creating the space in oneself where the possibilities of giving one's best become feasible. If you let go of your own compulsion and greed the things you are conditioned into by your culture then the more archetypal, more universally valid, more human, more compassionate, wiser activities and thoughts can come to your mind and you can dedicate yourself to them more fully.

Imagine no possesions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people Sharing all the world.

I don't like greed, I don't like ignorance. I really don't like anger. But I love love.

Just think: you cannot find a single misery for which you are not responsible. It may be jealousy, it may be anger, it may be greed - but something in you must be the reason that is creating the misery.

The love of nature is a passion for those in whom it once lodges. It can never be quenched. It cannot change. It is a furious, burning, physical greed, as well as a state of mystical exaltation. It will have its own.

I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It’s greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I’m joining the circus. Although I’m happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.

The twin killers of success are impatience and greed.

There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.

The role of government is to create responsible greed to keep boundaries around what people do.

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.

I was Amazement--I was Desire--I was Ecstasy and Rapture and the slightest bit of Greed.

People who are tired of K Street corruption and Wall Street greed are ready for Main Street Values.

The Internet is light at the end of the tunnel. I don't care if it's being used to peddle pornography, I don't care if it's being trivialized in a thousand ways. Anything can be trivialized. The important point is that it is leveling the playing field of global society. It is creating de-facto an entirely new set of political realities. None of the constipated, oligarchic structures that are resisting this were ever asked. Their greed betrayed them into investing in this in the first place without ever fully grasping what the implications of it were for their larger agenda.

In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor.

Sin is one thing but instinctive reaction or passion is another. These are our reactions: pride, anger, sexual indulgence, hate, greed, and so on. The corresponding sins are the gratification of these passions: when a man acts and brings into corporeal reality those works which were suggested to him by his desires. It is impossible to exist without desires arising, but not to give way to them is by no means impossible.

We have seen that in this country in the last few years, particularly on Wall Street, with the rise of the old human frailty of greed. This occurs when people begin to serve only their own needs to the detriment of everyone else.

This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.

Greed is an integral quality of a strong player.

There was not one cause for our internment, but many - a deep-seated racial prejudice working on top of fear, distrust, and greed. So how is one to say exactly where history begins or ends? It is all slow oscillations, curves, and waves which take so long to reveal themselves ... like watching a tree grow.

The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).

Beware of greed and remain pure and just. Restrain yourself from every vice. He who cannot restrain himself, how will he be able to teach others restraint?

Riots born out of political issues aren't the same as those born out of personal greed.

I've been working in Hollywood for a long time now in many different aspects in front of the camera, behind the camera, and I've worked with top executives, presidents of networks. I've worked all around. I see energy and what's around these studios and a lot of these offices. You don't get the high positions in these companies if you don't take advantage of other people in some way. I've seen that around. I've seen that around the studios, whether it's producers or whoever. Egos are there. Greed.

True happiness comes from having a sense of inner peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved by cultivating altruism, love and compassion, and by eliminating anger, selfishness and greed.

We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions.

Ambition is at the very core of success and extraordinary achievement. Unlike greed, it's a powerful, creative and constructive force.

I think it was a realization of this cancer, an understanding of the broader implications of what cancer is. The greed, the ravaging of lands and seas for profit, the taking of things that don't belong to us; what we've done to the environment in this fast-paced, careless hunger. I think all of that was happening in my body.

Greed is so destructive. It destroys everything.

As consumers we are incredibly discerning, we sense where has been great care in the design, and when there is cynicism and greed.