Quotes About Greed

Many people and companies only have one goal: money, money, and more money. Greed is ok when you let others profit from it, but greed for oneself is bad, it makes you ill.

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.

Our country, our economy - don't doubt me on this - our economy is based on capitalism. Barack Obama's stated reason for being inspired by Reverend Wright was his speech, 'White man's greed runs a world in need.' That inspired Obama, 'White man's greed runs a world in need.' That's the real American dream. Working hard you will get ahead. But you can't have that if you want to create a permanent underclass. You simply cannot have people getting ahead. It destroys the whole notion of a permanent underclass.

Greed may not be good, but it’s not so bad either. You humans think greed is just for money or power, but everyone wants something they can’t have.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

Love of glory, fear of shame, greed for fortune, the desire to make life agreeable and comfortable, and the wish to depreciate others - all of these are often the causes of the bravery that is spoken so highly of by men.

If our leaders are to enjoy the trappings of their position in the hierarchy, then we expect them to offer us protection. The problem is, for many of the overpaid leaders, we know that they took the money and perks and didn’t offer protection to their people. In some cases, they even sacrificed their people to protect or boost their own interests. This is what so viscerally offends us. We only accuse them of greed and excess when we feel they have violated the very definition of what it means to be a leader.

Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.

Some men make money not for the sake of living, but ache In the blindness of greed and live just for their fortune's sake.

The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes-naked greed and misconceived philanthropy.

The silence of the world could not rein back it's greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.

All human suffering springs from unbridled desire. Unless one extricates oneself from the clutch of greed, one will not free himself from the fetters of sorrow.

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility...According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist.

That poverty is no disaster is understood by everyone who has not yet succumbed to the madness of greed and luxury that turns everything topsy-turvy.

It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today.

Make Money a CENTRAL priority. This has nothing to do with greed and consumption and everything to do with life force and power.

Greed has no boundaries

The Bible and several other self help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful... or fun for that matter.

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

For too long, humanity has acted with an outrageous lack of responsibility. We wanted everything for ourselves: greed, really. We failed to look at the overall picture and did not take into consideration those with whom we share the world.

Up until the Depression, recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion.

Occupy Wall Street means making Wall Street and the corporate power elite understand that the people affected by the binge of unregulated greed are not going away, and they are not going to give up.

My decision not to eat animals anymore was paramount to my growth as a spiritual person. It made me aware of greed and made me more sensitive to cruelty. It made me feel like I was contributing to making the world better and that I was connected to everything around me. I felt like I was part of the whole by respecting every living thing rather than using it and destroying it by living unconsciously. Healing comes from love. And loving every living thing in turn helps you love yourself.

The three most effective incentives to human action may be ... classified as creed, greed and dread. ... In examining the scientist it is perhaps worth while to examine how far he is moved by these three incentives. I think that, rather peculiarly and rather exceptionally, he is very little moved by dread. ... He is in fact essentially a person who has been taught he must be fearless in his dealing with facts.

The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.

Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions.

This America has been the country of greed rather than the country of need.

Greed and selfishness do seem to be central motivators of mankind.

A compassionate heart still feels anger, greed, jealousy, and other such emotions. But it accepts them for what they are with equanimity, and cultivates the strength of mind to let them arise and pass without identifying with or acting upon them.

Our greed comes from our fear that we will not have enough - whether it is money or love that we grasp. Yoga teaches us to let go of these fears and so to realize the abundance around us and within us.

TARIFF, n. A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.

Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings.

America needs young people to be inspired to choose sacrifice over greed.

Unless the human race realizes with a passion and reverence beyond thought or words its inter-being with nature, it will destroy in its greed the very environment it is itself sustained by.

Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because the aggressor will be careful not to destroy what he is fighting to capture. Reasonable - that is, human - men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life.

When a man becomes old, his greed becomes young: sleep grows heavy at the time of morning.

Awareness is fire; it burns all that is wrong in you. It burns your ego. It burns your greed, it burns your possessiveness, it burns your jealousy - it burns all that is wrong and negative, and it enhances all that is beautiful, graceful, divine.

Nurture your felt love for nature. Never deny it. That love is the eons, the purifying intelligence, beauty and diversity of nature sustaining us in its perfection. Our disconnection from this love and its advice produces our hurt, greed and destructiveness. We must reconnect and restore its peaceful voice in our thoughts, soul and surroundings.

If we human beings rely only on material development, we can’t be sure of a positive outcome. Employing technology motivated by anger and hatred is likely to be destructive. It will only be beneficial if we seek the welfare of all beings. Human beings are the only species with the potential to destroy the world. Because of the risks of unrestrained desire and greed we need to cultivate contentment and simplicity.

We're always projecting our moral categories on things. I think that's inevitable. But capitalism places no particular value on morality. Morality in the market is enforced by contract and regulation and law, because morality is understood to be in conflict with the motive force of greed and accumulation.

The powerful have no monopoly on greed, hatred, fear, or ignorance.

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 curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.

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).

The human heart is greedy; it will use religion, color, or any other excuse to justify its greed. Blame the human heart.

From the Zen view all beings are in the grip of the three poisons, greed, anger and delusion (ignorance).

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