Quotes & Sayings About Ambition And Greed

The difference between greed and ambition is a greedy person desires things he isn't prepared to work for. — Habeeb Akande

To accept yourself wherever. you are ... And don't think in terms of competition! You need not be anywhere else. Wherever you are, if you can be happy there, you have become religious, you have become spiritual. Spirituality knows no competition, spirituality knows no greed, spirituality knows no ambition - because spirituality means desirelessness. — Rajneesh

The Fall of the House of Zeus is a riveting American saga of ambition, cunning, greed, corruption, high life and low life in the land of Faulkner and Grisham. These are good ol' boys gone bad with flair, private jets, and lots of cash to carry. Curtis Wilkie, a child of the South and a reporter's reporter, is the perfect match for this wild ride. — Tom Brokaw

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

Ambition and thirst for power have a part but greed and greed alone is the reason for a man wanting to swell his ward. — Charles Ranlett Flint

The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with That Which Is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place. This wanting and rewanting is an endless cycle for which, turns out, there is already a name: samsara. Samsara is at the heart of the vast human carnival: greed, neurosis, mad ambition, adultery, crimes of passion, the hacking to death of a terrified man on a hillside in the name of A More Pure And Thus Perfect Nation
and all of this takes place because we believe we will be made happy once our desires have been satisfied.
I know this. But still I'm full of desire ...
Buddha Boy — George Saunders

I am aware that there is a world out there that functions without regard to me. There are wars and budgets and bombings and vast dimensions of wealth and greed and ambition and corruption. And yet I don't feel a part of that world, and I wouldn't know how to join if I tried. — Douglas Coupland

You haven't changed. You may say: 'I'm full of love, I'm full of truth, I'm full of knowledge, I'm full of wisdom.' I say: 'That's all nonsense. Do you behave? Are you free of fear? Are you free of ambition, greed, envy and the desire to achieve success in every field? If not, you are just playing a game. You are not serious.' — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism, we worship acquisitiveness, we commercialize art, we cherish success and then we bark at the young about the gentle arts of the spirit. The kids know that if we really valued learning, we would pay our teachers what we pay our lawyers and stockbrokers. If we valued art, we would not measure it by its capacity to produce profits. If we regarded literature as important, we would remove it from the celebrity sweepstakes and spend a little money on our libraries. — Russell Baker

It is sadly true that most institutions and nations admire and reward sins of the "spirit," and various forms of arrogance and greed often lead to promotions and praise. But pride, ambition, and vanity are still pride, ambition, and vanity; they do not stop being capital sins because someone is pope or president. "Greed is good" in America, extravagant bonuses are envied and imitated, and careerism is rampant among the clergy ... Sins of the flesh, however, carry shame and guilt and can always be used to bring anybody down in church, culture, or the state. — Richard Rohr

We've had enough." He took back the report and jammed it under his arm. "We've had a bellyful, in fact."
"And like everyone who's had enough," said Control as Alleline noisily left the room, "he wants more. — John Le Carre

I remembered riding in the barge with Queen Katherine and how everyone had pulled off their hats as we went by and the women curtsied, and the children kissed their hands and waved. There had been a trust that the king was wise and strong and that the queen was beautiful and good and that nothing could go wrong. But Anne and the Boleyn ambition had opened a great crack in that unity and now everyone could see into the void. They could see now that the king was no better than some paltry little mayor of a fat little town, who wanted nothing more than to feather his own nest, and that he was married to a woman who knew desire, ambition and greed and longed for satisfaction. If — Philippa Gregory

When the first force, social feeling and community expectation, is ignored or affronted, the person concerned will reveal certain aggressive character traits: vanity, ambition, envy, jealousy, playing God, or greed; or nonaggressive traits: withdrawal, anxiety, timidity, or absence of social graces. When any of these forces gains the upper hand, it is usually because of deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. Yet the forces also create an intensity or tension that can give tremendous energy. — Tom Butler-Bowdon

Humankind has not learned about balance, let alone practiced it. It is guided by greed and ambition, steered by fear. In this way it will eventually destroy itself. But nature will survive; at least the plants will. — Brian L. Weiss

One of the effects of original sin is an instinctive prejudice in favour of our own selfish desires. We see things as they are not, because we see them centered on ourselves. Fear, anxiety, greed, ambition and our hopeless need for pleasure all distort the image of reality that is reflected in our minds. Grace does not completely correct this distortion all at once: but it gives us a means of recognizing and allowing for it. And it tells us what we must do to correct it. Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right. — Thomas Merton

Be free from vanity and pride. Be free from belief, disbelief, convictions, and parties. Be free from habit. Be free from ambition and greed. Be free from family and surroundings. Be free from fanaticism. Be free from fate; be master of your own life. Be free from death; life depends on the will of others, but death on our own will. — Sarah Bakewell

The qualities of character can be arranged in triads, in each of which the first and last qualities will be extremes and vices, and the middle quality a virtue or an excellence. So between cowardice and rashness is courage; between stinginess and extravagance is liberality; between sloth and greed is ambition; between humility and pride is modesty; between secrecy and loquacity, honesty; between moroseness and buffoonery, good humor; between quarrelsomeness and flattery, friendship; between Hamlet's indecisiveness and Quixote's impulsiveness is self-control.49 "Right," then, in ethics or conduct, is not different from "right" in mathematics or engineering; it means correct, fit, what works best to the best result. The — Will Durant

Beware of opportunities that are inspired by inordinate ambition or greed and not God-inspired. They are road blocks and distractions on your way to godly fulfillments — Ikechukwu Joseph

I also know that one must do what one can do. No matter how little it is, it is nonetheless a human testimony and human testimonies, as long as they are not based on greed or personal ambition for power, can have unexpected positive effects.
...I believe in local action and in small dimensions. It is only in such environments that human creativity and meaningful identities can truly surface and flourish. — Manfred Max-Neef

Men like Caesar and Pompey
they're not heroes, Meto. They're monsters. They call their greed and ambition "honour," and to satisfy their so-called honour they'll tear the world apart. But who am I to judge them? Every man does what he must, to protect his share of the world. What's the difference between killing whole villages and armies, and killing a single man? Caesar's reasons and mine are different only in degree. The consequences and the suffering still spread to the innocent (Gordianus the Finder to his son Meto) — Steven Saylor

If you're really going to uncover something as an artist, you're going to come into access with parts of your personality and your psyche that are really uncomfortable to face: your own ambition, your own greed, your own avarice, your own jealousies, and anything that would get in the way of the purity of your own artistic voice. — Billy Corgan

And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number. — H. Rider Haggard

Market values are fixed only in part by balance sheets and income statements; much more by the hopes and fears of humanity; by greed, ambition, acts of God, invention, financial stress and strain, weather, discovery, fashion and numberless other causes impossible to be listed without omission. — Gerald M. Loeb

All too often those who extol most loudly the virtues of selflessness turn out to be motivated by greed and ambition. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger ... they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor ... They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace. — Tacitus

Others try to remove guilt by shifting the standards of right and wrong in the name of cultural progression. One of the easiest ways to assuage guilt is to convince ourselves that our moral standards are impractical or outdated. Greed is not wrong; it's necessary in the good of ambition. Promoting ourselves is the only way to be successful. Lust is natural for contemporary men and women, and sex is expected regardless of marriage or gender. We attempt to remove our guilt by redefining right and wrong according to cultural fads. Yet guilt remains. No matter how hard — David Platt

Take for instance a man driven to incessant work by a sense of deep insecurity and loneliness; or another one driven by ambition, or greed for money. In all these cases the person is the slave of a passion, and his activity is in reality a "passivity" because he is driven; he is the sufferer, not the "actor." On the other hand a man sitting quiet and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be "passive", because he is not "doing" anything. In reality, this attitude of concentrated meditation is the highest activity there is, an activity of the soul, which is possible only under the condition of inner freedom and independence. — Erich Fromm

But those are lies!" Imweshi turned with a frigid smile. "Of course they are! But who cares? Does it matter to them?" She gestured toward the window. "Who are they going to believe? Us? We well-fed, clean, healthy, wealthy, coach-riding Kyn? Perhaps you with all your savage finery can convince them that the mechanical beasts that draw this carriage are something other than dark sorcery. What will you say to them, my truth-telling Wielder? Will your truth feed them, clothe them, give them warm homes? What would they rather hear: that Lojar Vald and his kind have driven them halfway into their graves out of greed and selfish ambition, that the promises of another life are mere manipulations to ensure their subservience, or that a small group of backward barbarians are the only thing between them and their salvation? If you stood in their place, who would you believe?" The carriage crested a hill and left the foundries and the empty-eyed Humans behind. Tarsa — Daniel Heath Justice

The children are innocent until proven guilty. For their sake, not ours, we must soldier on, muddling our way toward frugality, simplicity, liberty, community, until some kind of sane and rational balance is achieved between our ability to love and our cockeyed ambition to conquer and dominate everything in sight. No wonder the galaxies recede from us in every direction, fleeing at velocities that approach the speed of light. They are frightened. We humans are the Terror of the Universe. — Edward Abbey

Distraught with the comprehension of his demise, a shovel stood dormant, in the ditch of her own digging. Now sheltered from the glare of greed and ambition, were the distasteful thoughts sprinkled in fool's gold. — Don Swann II

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

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

The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention. — Thucydides

When the Internet first came into public use, it was hailed as a liberation from conformity, a floating world ruled by passion, creativity, innovation and freedom of information. When it was hijacked first by advertising and then by commerce, it seemed like it had been fully co-opted and brought into line with human greed and ambition. — Neil Strauss

there's always been heroes,
there's always been villains,
the stakes may have changed
but really there's no difference.

there's always been greed
and heartbreak and ambition.
jealousy, love,
trespass and contrition,

we're the same beings that began,
still living,
in all of our fury and foulness and friction.
Everyday odysseys.
Dreams vs decisions.
The stories are there if you listen. — Kate Tempest

Barristan Semly was not a bookish man, but he had often glanced through the pages of the White Book, where the deeds of his predecessors had been recorded. Some had been heroes, some weaklings, knaves, or cravens. Most were only men - quicker and stronger than most, more skilled with sword and shield, but still prey to pride, ambition, lust, love, anger, jealousy, greed for gold, hunger for power, and all the other failing that afflicted lesser mortals. The best of them overcame their flaws, did their duty, and died with their swords in their hands. The worst ...
The worst were those who played the game of thrones. — George R R Martin

We have created society and that society has conditioned us. Our minds are tortured and heavily conditioned by a morality which is not moral; the morality of the society is immorality, beacuse society admits and encourages violence, greed, competition, ambition and so on, which are essentially immoral. There is no love, consideration, affection, tenderness, and the 'moral respectability' of the society is utterly disorderly.
A mind that has been trained for thousand of years to accept, to obey and conform, cannot possibly be highly sensitive and therefore highly virtuous. We are caught in this trap. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The tale of Enron is a story of human weakness, of hubris and greed and rampant self-delusion; of ambition run amok; of a grand experiment in the deregulated world; of a business model that didn't work; and of smart people who believed their next gamble would cover their last disaster - and who couldn't admit they were wrong. — Bethany McLean

I make no pretensions to 'objectivity,' a fraudulent concept in an era of industrialized and politicized science in which intellectual mercenaries too often serve power and greed, the ambitions of competing nation-states, or the requirements of commerce. — Hazel Henderson

A man driven to incessant work by a sense of deep insecurity and loneliness; or another one driven by ambition, or greed for money. In all these cases the person is the slave of a passion, and his activity is in reality a "passivity" because he is driven; he is the sufferer, not the "actor." On the other hand, a man sitting quiet and contemplating, with no purpose or aim except that of experiencing himself and his oneness with the world, is considered to be "passive," because he is not "doing" anything. — Erich Fromm

To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, — J.K. Rowling

Some prevailing signs of social climbers are their:
- ticking cunning ambition
- times of deceit
- hand of wickedness
- gloves of bigotry
- hidden bunch of schemes
- cup of pride
- sip of prejudice
- odour of greed
- grit of hatred
Their favorite hunger is comparing themselves to others. A thirst of competition with sloth, jealousy and anger at their spirits. — Angelica Hopes

For every summons to a shining city on the hill or a promise of change we can believe in, we are presented with hundreds of examples of mudslinging and appeals to mob mentality. Rudeness is recast as honesty, greed is presented as ambition, and lines in the sand blur and move. — Nikki Stern

It is ironical that for all the value we give to the rational, life is primarily governed by the irrational. Love is not rational. Sorrow is not rational. Hatred, ambition, rage and greed are irrational. Even ethics, morals and aesthetics are not rational. They depend on values and standards which are ultimately subjective. What is right, sacred and beautiful to one group of people need not be right, sacred and beautiful to another group of people. — Devdutt Pattanaik

She's a mystery, a cipher, something nearly extinct these days: a person not controlled by ambition or greed or a crass need for attention, but by a desire to experience life completely and to make life a little easier for the people around her — Rebecca Miller

Alone has quite a different meaning; alone has beauty. To be alone means something entirely different. And you must be alone. When man frees himself from the social structure of greed, envy, ambition, arrogance, achievement, status - when he frees himself from those, then he is completely alone. That is quite a different thing. Then there is great beauty, the feeling of great energy. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

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