These Greed quotes will inspire you. Greed is an uncontrolled longing for an increase in the acquisition or use of material gain (be it food, money, land, or animate/inanimate possessions); or social value, such as status, or power.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and encouraging greed quotes, greed sayings, and greed proverbs.
Best Greed Quotes
- “Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.” ~ Erich Fromm
- “Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed.” ~ Mwai Kibaki
- “Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.” ~ Albert Einstein
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“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
- “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
- “Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
- “You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.” ~ Vernon Howard
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“Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.” ~ Janwillem van de Wetering
- “The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore
- “There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontent. And there is no greater disaster than greed.” ~ Laozi
- “Wars and revolutions and battles 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.” ~ Socrates
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“Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.” ~ Charlie Chaplin
- “You say, ‘If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.’ You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.” ~ Charles Spurgeon
- “Human behavior is subject to the same laws as any other natural phenomenon. Our customs, behaviors, and values are byproducts of our culture. No one is born with greed, prejudice, bigotry, patriotism, and hatred; these are all learned behavior patterns. If the environment is unaltered, similar behavior will reoccur.” ~ Jacque Fresco
- “If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.” ~ Jacques Yves Cousteau
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“Greed has poisoned men’s souls.” ~ Charlie Chaplin
- “There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
- “We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however, gained.” ~ Derrick Bell
- “For greed, all nature is too little.” ~ Seneca the Younger , Greed quotes & nature
- “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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“He who is greedy is always in want.” ~ Horace
- “Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves.” ~ Edwin Way Teale
- “There was a time in my life when I thought I had everything – millions of dollars, mansions, cars, nice clothes, beautiful women, and every other materialistic thing you can imagine. Now I struggle for peace.” ~ Richard Pryor
- “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 Dostoevsky
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“It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all.” ~ Democritus
- “Suddenly I find myself feeling sorry for those greedy, needy people whose huge salaries are never quite enough, whose sense of worth is defined by their own personal wad. What a diminished, impoverished world they must inhabit … We should feel sorry for them and their sadly limited lives. Then we should remember never to trust the judgment of those whose priorities are so idiotically skewed.” ~ Terence Blacker
- “Man has but little heeded the advice of the wise men. He has been – fatefully, if not willingly – less virtuous, less constant, less rational, less peaceful than he knows how to be than he is fully capable of being. He has been led astray from the ways of peace and brotherhood by his addiction to concepts and attitudes of narrow nationalism, racial and religious bigotry, greed and lust for power.” ~ Ralph Bunche
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“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe
- “It’s a cultural disability in America that we worship pleasure, leisure, and affluence. I think the church is doubly damned when they use Jesus as a vehicle for achieving all of that. Like, if you give a tithe, He’ll make you rich. Why? Are you hacking Him off or something? If you give a tithe, you get rid of ten percent of the root of all evil. You should be giving ninety percent. Cause God can handle money better than we can.” ~ Rich Mullins
- “Let us treasure up in our soul some of those things which are permanent…, not of those which will forsake us and be destroyed, and which only tickle our senses for a little while.” ~ Gregory of Nazianzus
- “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.” ~ Dalai Lama , Greed quotes & selfishness
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“The greedy man is incontent with a whole world set before him.” ~ Saadi
- “From the Zen view all beings are in the grip of the three poisons, greed, anger and delusion (ignorance).” ~ Brenda Shoshanna
- “Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.” ~ Thomas Harris
- “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“All earthly joy begins pleasantly, but at the end it gnaws and kills.” ~ Thomas a Kempis
- “The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever.” ~ Federico Garcia Lorca
- “Poverty wants much; but avarice, everything.” ~ Publilius Syrus
- “We risk all in being too greedy.” ~ Jean de La Fontaine
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“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” ~ Jim Elliot
- “Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles.” ~ Harry S. Truman
- “There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.” ~ Charles Kuralt
- “From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.” ~ Emile Durkheim
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“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.” ~ Socrates
- “Some people are afraid of generosity. They feel they will be taken advantage of or oppressed. In cultivating generosity, we are only oppressing our greed and attachment. This allows our true nature to come out and become lighter and freer.” ~ Ajahn Chah
- “Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.” ~ Frank Zappa
- “The be-all and end-all of life should not be to get rich, but to enrich the world.” ~ B. C. Forbes
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“You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.” ~ Malcolm X
- “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, What’s in it for me?” ~ Brian Tracy
- “There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.” ~ Maya Angelou , Greed quotes on life
- “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.” ~ Bertrand Russell
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“Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.” ~ Cyril Connolly
- “As time goes on we get closer to that American Dream of there being a pie cut up and shared. Usually, greed and selfishness prevent that and there is always one bad apple in every barrel.” ~ Rick Danko
- “Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist and you will sweep war from the earth.” ~ Henry Ford
- “There is much suffering in the world – physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.” ~ Mother Teresa
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“Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer.” ~ Julian Casablancas
- “The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.” ~ Thomas R. Donahue
- “Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire… Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; greed binds the selfish man, by which he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). But neither fear nor self-interest is undefiled, nor can they convert the soul. Only charity can convert the soul, freeing it from unworthy motives.” ~ Bernard of Clairvaux
- “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
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“Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I’m lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.” ~ Nina Simone
- “It’s time for greatness – not for greed. It’s a time for idealism – not ideology. It is a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.” ~ Marian Wright Edelman
- “What made traditional economies so radically different and so very fundamentally dangerous to Western economies were the traditional principles of prosperity of Creation versus scarcity of resources, of sharing and distribution versus accumulation and greed, of kinship usage rights versus individual exclusive ownership rights, and of sustainability versus growth.” ~ Rebecca Adamson
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“The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.” ~ Charles Kuralt
- “Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
