Greed Quotes - Page 22

• You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed.

  Michel Faber

  War, Blood, Envy

  Michel Faber (2014). “The Book of Strange New Things”, p.447, Canongate Books

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• Sex and commerce are fine things, but man cannot live by Viagra and the Dow Jones alone. A life led collecting things and experiences in pursuit of happiness is not necessarily a bad life, but it's not a good life either. Too often, the Democrats act like the Party of Lust, and the Republicans the Party of Greed. Both are deadly sins that eat at the soul.

  Rod Dreher

  Sex, Good Life, Party

  Rod Dreher (2010). “Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots”, p.12, Crown

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• Spinning yarns is a protection against the nuttiness... the greed, the hate all around us.

  John D. Voelker

  Hate, Yarn, Spinning

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• The whole plan of extermination was nothing less than a cold blooded, calculated political measure, having for its object the annihilation of a superior element in the population, which might prove troublesome, and to this must be added the motive of greed.

  Fridtjof Nansen

  Political, Might, Population

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• "As I think I told you once before," said I, "it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death."

  Charles Dickens

  Thinking, Words Of Wisdom, Too Much

  Charles Dickens (1850). “The Personal History of David Copperfield”, p.538

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• More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars. Yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between Governments. The once powerful malignant Nazi state is crumbling; the Japanese warlords are receiving in their homelands the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor. But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough; we must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Peace, Powerful, War

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• You can go back to tulip bulbs in Holland 400 years ago. The human beings going through combinations of fear and greed and all of that sort of thing, their behavior can lead to bubbles. And it may have had and Internet bubble at one time, you've had a farm bubble, farmland bubble in the Midwest which resulted in all kinds of tragedy in the early '80s.

  Howard Warren Buffett

  Years, Tragedy, Midwest

  "Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime". "The Charlie Rose Show", www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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• I mean people -- people don't get -- they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed and you can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is, and he's doing these things, you know, and he's getting rich, and your spouse is getting unhappy with you because you aren't doing -- pretty soon you start doing it. And so you get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots.

  Howard Warren Buffett

  Mean, People, Unhappy

  "Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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• People's lives are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don't survive.

  Bob Dylan

  Ambition, People, Selfishness

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• Greed is really the religion of vulgarity.

  Massimo Vignelli

  Vulgarity

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The innocence of those who grind the faces of the poor, but refrain from pinching the bottoms of their neighbour's wives! The innocence of Ford, the innocence of Rockefeller! The nineteenth century was the Age of Innocence--that sort of innocence. With the result that we're now almost ready to say that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making love.

  Aldous Huxley

  Men, Wife, Making Love

  Aldous Huxley (1955). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Such gluttony second to none
  Almost ended fatally
  When a bone choked a wolf as he gulped what he ate

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Bones, Gluttony

  Jean de La Fontaine (1964). “The fables of La Fontaine”

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• I'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 Picasso

  Art, Vanity, Stupidity

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• The poor man wants many things; the covetous man, all.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Want, Poor

  Herman Melville (1855). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.85

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• The best way to hate is the worst.
  'Tis to find what the hated need,
  Never mind of what actual worth,
  And wipe that out of the earth.
  Let them die of unsatisfied greed.

  Robert Frost

  Hate, Mind, Needs

  Robert Frost (1936). “A Further Range”

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• It is easy to shield the outer body from poisoned arrows, but it is impossible to shield the mind from the poisoned darts that originate within itself. Greed, anger, foolishness and the infatuations of egoism - these four poisoned darts originate within the mind and infect it with deadly poison.

  Albert Camus

  Fear, Arrows, Mind

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• Now that I have written many words,
  and let out so many loves, for so many,
  and been altogether what I always was
  a woman of excess, of zeal and greed,
  I find the effort useless.

  Anne Sexton

  Poetry, Effort, Excess

  Anne Sexton, “Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild, Wild Women”

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• Callous greed grows pious very fast.

  Lillian Hellman

  Callous, Grows, Pious

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• When trying a case [the famous judge] L. Cassius never failed to inquire "Who gained by it?" Man's character is such that no one undertakes crimes without hope of gain.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Character, Men, Judging

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• Avarice, or the desire of gain, is a universal passion which operates at all times, at all places, and upon all persons.

  David Hume

  Passion, Desire, Gains

  David Hume (1998). “Selected Essays”, p.58, Oxford Paperbacks

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• It's not greed and ambition that makes wars--it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny, always against tyranny and always in the best interests of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some 10,000,000 people in the interest of humanity. The next war, it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity.

  Paddy Chayefsky

  War, Ambition, Destiny

  Paddy Chayefsky (1995). “The screenplays”

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• Greed, desire, ambition, jealousy, possessiveness, domination - you have to watch everything. And they are all interconnected, remember. If greed disappears, then anger will disappear. If anger disappears, jealousy will disappear. If jealousy disappears, violence will disappear. If violence disappears, possessiveness will disappear. They are all intertwined. In fact, they are spokes of the same wheel, and the hub that supports them all is the ego. So watch the ways of the ego.

  Rajneesh

  Jealousy, Ambition, Support

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• It's no go the merry-go-round, it's no go the rickshaw
  All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.

  Louis MacNeice

  Want, Tickets, Limousines

  'Bagpipe Music' (1938)

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• What 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

  Children, Men, Organization

  Meridel Le Sueur (1990). “Harvest song: collected essays and stories”, West End Pr

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• Send me the half that's got my keys.

  Harry Graham

  Keys, Half

  'Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes' (1899) 'Mr Jones' (poem attributed to 'G.W.')

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