In the vast tapestry of human emotions, greed stands out as one that has both propelled societies forward and torn them apart. "Greed quotes" offer a glimpse into the myriad perspectives that writers, philosophers, and thinkers have held about this complex emotion throughout history. Whether seen as a driving force behind economic prosperity or a destructive entity leading to insatiable desires, greed's multifaceted nature continues to intrigue and challenge our understanding of human behavior.
This exploration dives deep into the essence of greed, drawing from these quotes and weaving them into a narrative that seeks to decode its lasting impact on the human experience.
Greed Quotes (2024)
Greed, an age-old human trait, has been the subject of contemplation, criticism, and analysis by thinkers throughout history. These quotes shed light on its various facets, offering a window into the depths of human desire and ambition.
"For greed, all nature is too little." - Seneca
"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction." - Erich Fromm
"Avarice is the root of all evils." - St. Thomas Aquinas
"The covetous man is always in want." - Horace
"There is no fire like passion; there is no shark like hatred; there is no snare like folly; there is no torrent like greed." - Buddha
"Greed's worst point is its ingratitude." - Seneca
"Greed is not a financial issue. It's a heart issue." - Andy Stanley
"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." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
"He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have." - Socrates
"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed." - Mahatma Gandhi
"Three things are never satisfied; four never say, 'Enough': Sheol, the barren womb, the land never satisfied with water, and the fire that never says, 'Enough.'" - Proverbs 30:15-16
"The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good." - Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street"
"Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires." - Lao Tzu
"The deadly greed of gold, to which grandeur leads us." - Virgil
"To have what we want is riches; but to be able to do without is power." - George MacDonald
"There are people who have money and people who are rich." - Coco Chanel
"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill
"You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you." - Maya Angelou
"Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like." - Will Rogers
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." - Henry David Thoreau
"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses." - Shirley Chisholm
"To greed, all nature is insufficient." - Heraclitus
"It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor." - Seneca
"It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly." - Bertrand Russell
"The lack of money is the root of all evil." - Mark Twain
"Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him." - Voltaire
"Greed is the lack of confidence of one's own ability to create." - Vanna Bonta
"Success is not greedy, as people think, but insignificant. That is why it satisfies nobody." - Seneca
"Lust is to the other passions what the nervous fluid is to life; it supports them all, lends strength to them all: ambition, cruelty, avarice, revenge, are all founded on lust." - Marquis de Sade
"You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy." - Eric Hoffer
"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful." - Warren Buffett
"The point is that you can't be too greedy." - Donald Trump
"There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontentment. And there is no greater disaster than greed." - Lao Tzu
"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion." - Simone de Beauvoir
"Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important." - T.S. Eliot
"Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end." - Bob Marley
"The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax." - Albert Einstein
"Of all the worldly passions, lust is the most intense. All other worldly passions seem to follow in its train." - Buddha
"They deify what crushes them and find reason to hope in what impoverishes them." - Albert Camus on Capitalism
"What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" - Mark 8:36
"When I had money everyone called me brother." - Polish proverb
"Do not wear yourself out to get rich; do not trust your own cleverness." - Proverbs 23:4
"We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs." - Gloria Steinem
"If you want to feel rich, just count the things you have that money can't buy." - Proverb
"He who dies with the most toys is still dead." - Anonymous
"The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money." - Unknown
"The greedy are in want of everything." - Solon
"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not." - Epicurus
"Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by the regular contact with outdoor growths — animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies — or it will dwindle and pale." - Walt Whitman
"The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed." - Mahatma Gandhi
"We are all born greedy, and the exit is the same, the funeral shroud has no pockets." - Arabian Proverb
"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants." - Epictetus
"Avarice is always poor." - Samuel Johnson
"There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed." - Frank Buchman
"Many possessions, if they do not make a man better, are at least expected to make his children happier; and this pathetic hope is behind many exertions." - George Santayana
"Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear." - Cyril Connolly
"To be rich is not what you have in your bank account, but what you have in your heart." - Unknown
"Riches do not exhilarate us so much with their possession as they torment us with their loss." - Epicurus
"Poverty wants some things, luxury many things, avarice all things." - Benjamin Franklin
"The human race is governed by its imagination." - Napoleon Bonaparte
"If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it." - John D. Rockefeller
"All riches have their origin in mind. Wealth is in ideas - not money." - Robert Collier
"There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it." - Maya Angelou
"If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life." - Billy Graham
"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common — this is my symphony." - William Ellery Channing
"Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you." - Oscar Wilde
"Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough." - Janwillem van de Wetering
"We don’t need more to be thankful for, we just need to be more thankful." - Carlos Castaneda
"The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money." - Unknown
"Money is usually attracted, not pursued." - Jim Rohn
"The value of a man resides in what he gives and not in what he is capable of receiving." - Albert Einstein
"We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution." - Victor Hugo
"The everyday cares and duties, which men call drudgery, are the weights and counterpoises of the clock of time, giving its pendulum a true vibration and its hands a regular motion; and when they cease to hang upon its wheels, the pendulum no longer swings, the hands no longer move, the clock stands still." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Riches do not consist in the possession of treasures, but in the use made of them." - Napoleon Bonaparte
"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." - Winston Churchill
"Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn." - Miguel de Cervantes
"Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life." - Adam Smith
"It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake." - Margaret Thatcher
"Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work, one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." - Voltaire
"A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart." - Jonathan Swift
"The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them." - Peter Lynch
"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages." - Henry Ford
"If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion." - George Bernard Shaw
"Money and women are the most sought after and the least known about of any two things we have." - Will Rogers
"Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed." - Mahatma Gandhi
"What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us." - Julia Cameron
"The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax." - Albert Einstein
"Don’t let money run your life, let money help you run your life better." - John Rampton
"When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion." - Voltaire
"The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing." - Philip Fisher
"Money often costs too much." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Many people are in the dark when it comes to money, and I’m going to turn on the lights." - Dave Ramsey
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison
"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin
"Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer." - Julian Casablancas
"Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much." - Erich Fromm
"The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket." - Andrew Carnegie
"If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem." - J.P. Getty
"Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble." - Warren Buffett
"Money can’t buy happiness, but it will certainly get you a better class of memories." - Ronald Reagan
"A penny saved is a penny earned." - Benjamin Franklin
"Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That’s not just a catchy slogan. It’s the very essence of successful investing." - J. Paul Getty
"Wealth is the ability to fully experience life." - Henry David Thoreau
"Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs." - Zig Ziglar
"Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like." - Will Rogers
"Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants." - Epictetus
"To get rich, you have to be making money while you’re asleep." - David Bailey
"How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case." - Robert G. Allen
"It's not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for." - Robert Kiyosaki
Navigating the intricate dance between desire and excess, the "Quotes About Greed" shed light on humanity's complex relationship with materialism and avarice. They remind us of the timeless tug-of-war between necessity and luxury, between what we truly need and what we merely covet.
As these quotes emphasize, the wisdom of generations warns us against letting greed dictate our actions, urging us to cherish intangible values and seek contentment in the simple joys of life.
