Popular quotes about Greed! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 9
Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and cuts through to the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Michael DouglasOne interesting thing about greed is that although the underlying motive is to seek satisfaction, the irony is that even after obtaining the object of your desire you are still not satisfied. The true antidote of greed is contentment.
Dalai LamaThere is nothing inherently wrong with greed as a human motivator - greed motivating evolution. But there's a huge disconnect between the classes. It is very demoralizing to work for someone who makes a billion dollars a year while you make just barely enough to make it.
Oliver StoneThe basic cause of all our difficulties is immaturity. That's why I talk so much about peace within ourselves as a step toward peace in our world. If we were mature, war would not be possible and peace would be assured. In our immaturity we do not know the laws of the universe, and we think evil can be overcome by more evil. One symptom of our immaturity is greed, making it difficult for us to learn the simple lesson of sharing.
Peace PilgrimWe're constantly dealing with old problems under the circumstance of new variables, so just things like greed and fear and anger and inequality are issues that humanity has constantly dealt with. The parameters and the variables change but these are old things. And discussing those things is slightly more timeless rather than focusing on one tiny thing.
Dan ManganPeace and the survival of life on earth as we know it are threatened by human activities which lack a commitment to humanitarian values. Destruction of nature and nature's resources result from ignorance, greed and lack of respect for the earth's living things.
Dalai LamaA sack that can contain a person's greed...doesn't exist in this world. If your hearts not content, no matter how much you put in the sack, it's never enough.
Seo Do-youngLet us avoid debt as we would avoid a plague...Let every head of every household see to it that he has on hand enough food and clothing, and, where possible, fuel also, for at least a year ahead...Let every head of household aim to own his own home, free from mortgage. Let us again clothe ourselves with these proved and sterling virtues-honesty, truthfulness, chastity, sobriety, temperance, industry, and thrift; let us discard all covetousness and greed.
J. Reuben ClarkSome men make money not for the sake of living, but ache In the blindness of greed and live just for their fortune's sake.
JuvenalThe silence of the world could not rein back it's greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won.
Philip K. DickThere is no greater fault than sensual indulgence. There is no greater misfortune than malcontent. There is no greater calamity than greed.
LaoziIt's time for the wealthy to pay their fair share before the middle class becomes the forgotten class.- And it's time for the banks to give back what they were given. There are those in politics, particularly those on the conservative side, who can't get enough of telling people that the wealthy one per cent must not be taxed because doing so kills jobs. The real job-killers are corporate greed and political expediency. It's time for working people in Maine and all across the country to take back the American dream.
Stephen KingThe media have just buried the last yuppie, a pathetic creature who had not heard the news that the great pendulum of public consciousness has just swung from Greed to Compassion and from Tex-Mex to meatballs
Barbara EhrenreichWhat has patriotism come to be but greed and false pride, when the only way it can show itself is by shedding blood to gain gold? More economic advantage, more territory, more power.
Sylvia ThompsonIf it wasn't for good," my mother says, "we human beings would have been wiped out a long time ago. Either the monsters would have gotten us or we would have killed each other off with greed and jealousy and anger. So we have to believe in good. We have to look for the good in ourselves.
Joseph BruchacNowadays, hoy en dรญa, with our world full of war and violence and lack of love, a world full of greed, a world of domination, grasping power, venal stupidity, real evil, donโt get me started, itโs good to know that a conversation about tacos will always engender a sense of comfort and happiness. If only we could sit down at a big round world table and eat tacos in a spirit of love we might begin to work on world peace!
Denise ChavezWhat I loathe is the multi-national conglomerates who must take responsibility for the degradation and pollution of so much of our landscape with their factory farming and greed.
Fay GodwinUp 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.
James BuchanUbuntu is not a biblical concept but an ancient African one. Nevertheless it falls back on one simple thing: that humans have been created for togetherness, and what drives us apart is greed, lust for power, and a sense of exclusion, but those are aberrations.
Allan BoesakThere is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading -- that is a good life.
Annie DillardYou point out that war is only a symptom of the whole horrid business of human behavior, and cannot be isolated. And that, even if we abolish war, we shall not abolish hate and greed. So might it have been argued about slave emancipation, that slavery was but one aspect of human disgustingness, and that to abolish it would not end the barbarity that causes it. But did the abolitionists therefore waste their breath? And do we waste ours now in protesting against war?
Rose MacaulayEuropean and American companies companies do create jobs for some people but what they're mainly going to do is make an already wealthy elite wealthier, and increase its greed and strong desire to hang on to power. So immediately and in the long run, these companies - harm the democratic process a great deal.
Aung San Suu KyiSo, never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed. If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this, not as a class or classes, but as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth.
William FaulknerClarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
Natalie GoldbergWe forget the nature of true power. The power within is abundance. The power without is greed.
Terry Tempest WilliamsAbundance is rooted in community, not individualism. Abundance is what is before our eyes, but we cannot see when we are blinded by greed.
Terry Tempest WilliamsAs Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live--we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love. The gospel will die in the toxic soil of self.
Jen HatmakerWhen I travel around the world, I see that poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent? The Earth can produce enough for everyoneโs need. But not enough for everyoneโs greed.
Philip WollenThe ultimate goal of those who blame workers for Wall Street's economic crisis is to unravel the fabric of our common life in pursuit of greed and power.
Richard TrumkaI write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. Itโs greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, Iโm joining the circus. Although Iโm happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.
Anne TylerIn other words, Iโm against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration.
Viggo MortensenCultivate peace first in the garden of your heart by removing the weeds of lust, hatred, greed, selfishness, and jealousy. Then only you can manifest it externally. Then only, those who come in contact with you, will be benefited by your vibrations of peace and harmony.
SivanandaIf they survive, today's children will inherit a world that our fathers and grandfathers have ravaged, where the seas are acidic cesspools that the whales have fled, where rain forests are Indian memories never to return, and where human greed has plundered Mother Earth's innards and turned human genes into factories for profit. They will inherit a diminished planet where fresh water is increasingly rare, and where fresh air is a commodity... We live in a world that fears and hates its young. How else can one explain the bequest of such a foul, polluted, and hollow inheritance?
Mumia Abu-JamalBeyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?
Jiddu KrishnamurtiI'm a joker who has understood his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries.
Pablo PicassoGreed, it ain't going anywhere. They should have that in a big billboard across Times Square. Without people you're nothing.
Joe StrummerAdam Smith saw the greed of modern capitalism for what it was - a form of destructive ambition that may have favorable effects on the productive capacities of society, but which is of no direct benefit to anyone - not even to the greedy themselves, whose illusory chase after a will-o-the-wisp leaves them morally bankrupt and unhappy.
Allen W. WoodThe 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.
Terence McKennaThe fact is, most people are not going to be rich someday. And we've had a concerted policy of taking money away from the poor and giving it to the rich wholesale, and at the same time, we have the runaway corporations, and the greed.
Roger EbertAt a time when unbridled greed, malignant aggression, and existence of weapons of mass destruction threatens the survival of humanity, we should seriously consider any avenue that offers some hope.
Stanislav GrofIt's a joke. Greed and the desire to take drugs are two separate things. If you want to separate the two, the thing you do is make drugs legal. Accept the reality that people do want to change their consciousness, and make an effort to make safer, healthier drugs.
Jerry GarciaWhat happens in a strike happens not to one person alone.... It is a crisis with meaning and potency for all and prophetic of a future. The elements in crisis are the same, there is a fermentation that is identical. The elements are these: a body of men, women and children, hungry; an organization of feudal employers out to break the back of unionization; and the government Labor Board sent to "negotiate" between this hunger and this greed.
Meridel Le Sueur