Quotes & Sayings About Money And Greed

Let me leave you with a positive thought. William Shakespeare once wrote: "The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite." They call this the Hidden Economy and it is not based on greed or love of money, but on unconditional, selfless, boundless and unstinting Love. — Etienne De L'Amour

One of the strangest things in life is the false ideas everywhere prevalent regarding the nature of happiness. The general belief seems to be that it is founded on things that can be bought with money. The more money the more things, and the more things the more enjoyment, the greater the degree of happiness. But money has never yet been known to buy happiness. No one has ever yet found happiness by chasing it over the earth. It is not in our food, it is not in our drink, it is not in our clothes or material possessions; it is not in excitement or a constant round of pleasure. Happiness is born of right living. It is the child of right thinking, and right acting, of helpful service. A selfish life never knows real happiness. Greed and envy never touch it. — Orison Swett Marden

Greed is a strange, strange sin.
All you want to do is acquire. Acquire money, acquire material, acquire time, acquire energy, acquire attention. The running mantra is "I want, I want, I want" but that quickly turns to "I need, I need, I need."
Suddenly there just isn't enough time for friends, for family, for anyone. Your goal is to acquire and to make sure what you acquire stays acquired. Your life depends on it. You don't see truth because the truth is shadowed by enormous homes, incredibly fast cars, in lavish spending. Your life no longer belongs to you, but you are blind to it all because those around you are seeking the same.
So you shuffle along at an impossible rate, and you pass the real world around you.
But what you'll come to realize, altogether too late, is that it's never enough.
It's simply never enough — Amelie Fisher

Now we see again, under the blue heavens where the larks are singing in the hot April sky, why the Romans called the Etruscans vicious. Even in their palmy days the Romans were not exactly saints. But they thought they ought to be. They hated the phallus and the ark, because they wanted empire and dominion and, above all, riches: social gain. You cannot dance gaily to the double flute and at the same time conquer nations or rake in large sums of money. Delenda est Carthago. To the greedy man, everybody that is in the way of its greed is vice incarnate. — D.H. Lawrence

Now there was great rejoicing at the rumor of Alderic's quest, for all folk knew that he was a cautious man, and they deemed that he would succeed and enrich the world, and they rubbed their hands in the cities at the thought of largesse; and there was joy among all men in Alderic's country, except perchance among the lenders of money, who feared they would soon be paid. And there was rejoicing also because men hoped that when the Gibbelins were robbed of their hoard, they would shatter their high-built bridge and break the golden chains that bound them to the world, and drift back, they and their tower, to the moon, from which they had come and to which they rightly belonged. There was little love for the Gibbelins, though all men envied their hoard.
("The Hoard Of The Gibbelins") — Lord Dunsany

Some men make money not for the sake of living, but ache In the blindness of greed and live just for their fortune's sake. — Juvenal

[A]nd you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestows it.
[Man and the Gospel (1865)] — Thomas Guthrie

I can't do that," he said, exhaling sharply and staring out the glass into the street.
"Why not?"
His face softened. "I need his money."
Spencer looked at me and I couldn't help but stare back. We were all in the same boat, prisoners to GREED. — Fisher Amelie

Most people blindly accept the fact that gaining money is essential for survival, without questioning its nature. The truth is, our current monetary system is the reason that humanity is in such a devastating state, the reason that the world is so full of corruption. Our monetary system has been limiting the potential of human beings for centuries.
Inventions that benefit humanity are hidden or destroyed because they are not profitable, or because they interfere with the business of corporations. The supreme goal of modern man is to obtain wealth, because he believes that material things will bring him happiness. He invests the majority of his time and energy into gaining money at any cost. The accumulation of wealth has contributed to man's greed and selfishness. Earning money is more important to him than being a good person, benefiting humanity, and even life itself. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In treating people as less important than things, work becomes both demoralised and demoralising and we become blind to the moral content of our decisions ... Money and wilfful blindness make us act in ways incompatible wiht what believe our ethics to be, and often even with our own self-interest ... the problem with money isn't fundamentally about greed, although it can be comforting to think so. The problem with money is that we live in societies in which mutual support and co-operation is essential, but money erodes the relationships we need to lead productive, fulfilling and genuinely happy lives. When money becomes the dominant behavior, it doesn't cooperate with, or amplify, our relationships; it disengages us from them. — Margaret Heffernan

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's like a bunch of hookers advertising their cellulite/ stretch- mark infested bodies to the highest bidder, and then claiming they deserve respect. Crawling on their hands and knees, pupils dilated on the high of greed, licking their lips almost tasting their next job of self- whoredom, and nothing is more tempting than the idea of Mr. Ellison. He could pay for tricks perform by the Pope, chandler-swinging strip-tease nuns.. No one has ever said "NO" to the idea of money and therefore no one has ever said "No" to Mr. Ellison and actually meant it... and then you have to wonder why he has no respect for people? — Avra Amar Filion

MONEY
There are people who believe that money is God and there are others who believe that money is the devil. Both are in ignorance. Money is merely a medium of exchange. Do not compare this medium to God, dirt or devil. It is the greed or hatred of man that labels money as 'good' or 'bad'. — Sirshree

Money is sacred as everyone knows ... So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty. — Barry Unsworth

Because it is ignorance about money that causes so much greed and fear," said rich dad. "Let me give you some examples. A doctor, wanting more money to better provide for his family, raises his fees. By raising his fees, it makes health care more expensive for everyone. It hurts the poor people the most, so they have worse health than those with money. Because the doctors raise their fees, the attorneys raise their fees. Because the attorneys' fees have gone up, schoolteachers want a raise, which raises our taxes, and on and on and on. Soon there will be such a horrifying gap between the rich and the poor that chaos will break out and another great civilization will collapse. History proves that great civilizations collapse when the gap between the haves and have-nots is too great. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

Laissez-faire, supply and demand-one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egotism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause-it is the gospel of despair. — Thomas Carlyle

When your child is a little older, you can teach him about our tax system in a way that is easy to grasp. Offer him, say, $10 to mow the lawn. When he has mowed it and asks to be paid, withhold $5 and explain that this is income tax. Give $1 to his younger brother, and tell him that this is "fair". Also, explain that you need the other $4 yourself to cover the administrative costs of dividing the money. When he cries, tell him he is being "selfish" and "greedy". Later in life he will thank you. — Joseph Sobran

Providing for one's family as a good husband and father is a watertight excuse for making money hand over fist. Greed may be a sin, exploitation of other people might, on the face of it, look rather nasty, but who can blame a man for 'doing the best' for his children? — Eva Figes

Fear and, to a lesser extent, greed are what make money move. — Michael Lewis

If we lived for ever, what you say would be true. But we have to die, we have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things, because Death is coming. I love death - not morbidly, but because He explains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death and Money are the eternal foes. Not Death and Life. . . . Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him. Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Death is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the thews of Love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no one who can stand against him. — E. M. Forster

During anger, the parmanus (subatomic particles) are fiery and fierce and during greed, there are parmanus (subatomic particles) of attraction towards money. — Dada Bhagwan

I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. — Robert G. Ingersoll

Instead of loving people and using money, people often love money and use people. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

He had allowed the advertisers to multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop. — Aldous Huxley

These are the two factors that lead to the destruction of our environment: money and time-or to say it another way, greed and haste. The question is, or seems to be, are we going to have an immediate profit and an immediate saving of time, or are we going to do what we really should do as God's children? — Francis Schaeffer

When all the trees have been cut down and all the animals have been hunted to extinction, when all the waters are polluted and the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Giving with glad and generous hearts has a way of routing out the tough old miser within us. Even the poor need to know that they can give. Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure, does something within us. It destroys the demon greed. — Richard J. Foster

The women who take husbands not out of love but out of greed, to get their bills paid, to get a fine house and clothes and jewels; the women who marry to get out of a tiresome job, or to get away from disagreeable relatives, or to avoid being called an old maid
these are whores in everything but name. The only difference between them and my girls is that my girls gave a man his money's worth. — Polly Adler

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

Greed is when we love money more than God and do not love God with our money. — Julian Hardyman

I feel terrible about corporate greed. Growing up in a household that was a little more humble and didn't put so much emphasis on money and material goods, I think I have a pretty good head on my shoulders. — Chloe Sevigny

Selfishness so often is the basis of money problems, which are a very serious and real factor affecting the stability of family life. Selfishness is at the root of adultery, the breaking of solemn and sacred covenants to satisfy selfish lust. Selfishness is the antithesis of love. It is a cankering expression of greed. It destroys self-discipline. It obliterates loyalty. It tears up sacred covenants. It afflicts both men and women. — Gordon B. Hinckley

19-21 "Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or - worse! - stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moth and rust and burglars. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being. 22-23 "Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have! 24 "You can't worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you'll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can't worship God and Money both. — Eugene H. Peterson

If our leaders are to enjoy the trappings of their position in the hierarchy, then we expect them to offer us protection. The problem is, for many of the overpaid leaders, we know that they took the money and perks and didn't offer protection to their people. In some cases, they even sacrificed their people to protect or boost their own interests. This is what so viscerally offends us. We only accuse them of greed and excess when we feel they have violated the very definition of what it means to be a leader. — Simon Sinek

1. Investors give fund managers money at the wrong time. Now that you've had some time to read this book and understand the importance of buying stocks during fear cycles and holding during greed cycles, this first indicator should make sense. To understand this principle, imagine that you're the fund manager of a $100 billion investment fund. When the stock market crashes and you're able to purchase severely undervalued businesses with minimal debt, not only do you lack funds to invest, but all your resources are being depleted by scared investors. Instead of receiving money to buy the great deals, your investors are selling their shares in the fund and you don't have the capacity to take advantage of the market behavior. This reason alone severely handicaps fund managers as they attempt to beat the market. — Preston G. Pysh

Make Money a CENTRAL priority. This has nothing to do with greed and consumption and everything to do with life force and power. — Danielle LaPorte

He was no doubt correct. "Greed is all-consuming," I remarked. He laughed. "You poor idiot. The day of the gentleman is over. Only those with money will matter, only those who can pay will command respect and attention. You are puffed with pride because of your so-called honor, but your honor will disappear. Wealth will become honor, and I will have all of it." His smile widened. "You are not answering, Captain? What is the matter?" My voice went cold and hard. "I have no wish to waste time lecturing you. You are a fool, and soon you will learn how much of a fool. — Ashley Gardner

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. — Henry A. Wallace

Loafing failures - I saw the labor unions who won every claim against me, by reason of my ability to make their livelihood possible - I saw that any man's desire for money he could not earn was regarded as a righteous wish, but if he earned it, it was damned as greed - I saw the politicians who winked at me, telling me not to worry, because I could just work a little harder and outsmart them all. — Ayn Rand

You have found that you were more secure before you accumulated so much. See what greed has imposed on you: You have filled your house and now you fear burglars. You have hoarded money and lost sleep. See what greed has commanded you: "Do this!" And you did it. — Saint Augustine

If you are preaching on the first commandment ("Thou shalt have no other gods before me") or Ephesians 5:5 (which calls greed idolatry) or any of the several hundred other places in the Bible that speak of idols, you could quote David Foster Wallace, the late postmodern novelist. In his Kenyon College commencement speech he argues eloquently and forcefully that "everyone worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."32 He goes on to say everyone has to "tap real meaning in life," and whatever you use to do that, whether it is money, beauty, power, intellect, or something else, it will drive your life because it is essentially a form of worship. He enumerates why each form of worship does not merely make you fragile and exhausted but can "eat you alive." If you lay out his argument in support of fundamental biblical teaching, even the most secular audience will get quiet and keep listening to what you say next. — Timothy J. Keller

Look at the nuclear arms race as a vortex arising out of the greed of human beings who are isolated in their separate selves and do not feel the connection to other human beings. They are also feeling a peculiar emptiness and become greedy for everything they can get to fill themselves. Hence nuclear industries proliferate because they provide large amounts of money and the greed is so extensive that such people do not care what might happen from their actions. — David Shainberg

There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died. — Terry Pratchett

Time, my brothers and sisters, seems to be running out; we are not yet tearing one another apart, but we are tearing apart our common home. Today, the scientific community realizes what the poor have long told us: harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem. The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called "the dung of the devil". An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people's decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home. — Pope Francis

I think one of the most pervasive evils in this world is greed and acquiring money for money's sake. Once you have six houses and a plane, it's just about a number. It's never been anything I understood. — Kevin Bacon

He pointed to the money, and said:
The love of it is the root of all evil. There it lies, the ancient tempter, newly red with the shame of its latest victory
the dishonor of a priest of God and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it could but speak, let us hope that it would be constrained to confess that of all its conquests this was the basest and the most pathetic. — Mark Twain

Should it happen, that your partner leaves you for someone else with more money. To where later you strike it richer than the person they left you for, and the ex finds out, after losing all and regretting. It was a blessing that it ended. Though money wasn't sufficient then, mostly they were rich with your love, now suffering being broke in both. — Anthony Liccione

A motto of many politicians, public servants and money bags: Ask not 'What can I do for you?' but 'What can I do you for? — H.M. Forester

Many people and companies only have one goal: money, money, and more money. Greed is ok when you let others profit from it, but greed for oneself is bad, it makes you ill. — Dalai Lama

They can talk shit about each other behind the others' backs, but when it comes down to it, money is the one true race and everyone down here is the color of greenbacks and as tall as mountains. — Richard Kadrey

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.
Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.
They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. — Henry A. Wallace

Nearly all of these successful folks have made it in the business world by sticking with the free market ideal of survival of the fittest over everything else. They believe in giving no quarter, and consequently they are antiunion, pro-death penalty, and pro-war- that is, until they actually feel the war's cost in their own wallets and a big voice coming out of the sky says: You could grab more money if we did not have this war to pay for! This is America, where greed is christened "drive" and is deemed a virtue. — Joe Bageant

Most people have a price. And they have a price because of human emotions named fear and greed. First, the fear of being without money motivates us to work hard, and then once we get that paycheck, greed or desire starts us thinking about all the wonderful things money can buy. A pattern is then set: get up, go to work, pay bills, get up, go to work, pay bills ... Their lives are then run forever by two emotions, fear and greed. Offer them more money, and they continue the cycle by also increasing their spending. This is what I call the Rat Race. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

The truth now.He was disappointed in human beings.He had seen too many betrayals,too many pitiful weaknesses,too much greed for money and fame.The falseness between lovers,husbands and wifes,fathers,sons,mothers,daughters — Mario Puzo

Whenever one feels like saying "the money that billionaire spent on his fleet of yachts could have been used better by the "public sector"", one should ask oneself when was the last time one heard of a billionaire buying an army of tanks and a set of nuclear weapons. — Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski

An aristocracy come to power, convinced of its own disinterested quality, believing itself above both petty partisan interest and material greed. The suggestion that this also meant the holding and wielding of power was judged offensive by these same people, who preferred to view their role as service, though in fact this was typical of an era when many of the great rich families withdrew from the new restless grab for money of a modernizing America, and having already made their particular fortunes, turned to the public arena as a means of exercising power. They were viewed as reformers, though the reforms would be aimed more at the newer seekers of wealth than at those who already held it. ("First-generation millionaires," Garry Wills wrote in Nixon Agonistes, "give us libraries, second-generation millionaires give us themselves.") — David Halberstam

Which epitaph would you choose for your grave-stone: "He made lots of money." or "He saved the Earth"? And don't think I'm being sarcastic, because for once, I'm not. We're all going to die. What will be your legacy? Smaug-loads of money? or Saving the Earth? It's your choice. — Steve Bivans

The hidden economy [is] fed not by money and greed but by love, pure and simple. You see the best and truly golden opportunities do not arise to benefit oneself, but in order to benefit others. — Etienne De L'Amour

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: 'I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars. — Mark Twain

Vain mistaken mortals, who, valuing themselves on names and titles, suppose that the virtues of the mind must be attached to an empty sound, when every day's experience proves that birth is disgraced, titles rendered contemptible, and riches a curse, by the vices, meanness, and dissipation of its possessors! — Eliza Parsons

Because life is robust,
Because life is bigger than equations, stronger than money, stronger than guns and poison and bad zoning policy, stronger than capitalism,
Because Mother Nature bats last, and Mother Ocean is strong, and we live inside our mothers forever, and Life is tenacious and you can never kill it, you can never buy it,
So Life is going to dive down into your dark pools, Life is going to explode the enclosures and bring back the commons,
O you dark pools of money and law and quantitudinal stupidity, you oversimple algorithms of greed, you desperate simpletons hoping for a story you can understand,
Hoping for safety, hoping for cessation of uncertainty, hoping for ownership of volatility, O you poor fearful jerks,
Life! Life! Life! Life is going to kick your ass. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul? — Socrates

And it will often happen that a man with wealth in the form of coined money will not have enough to eat; and what a ridiculous kind of wealth is that which even in abundance will not save you from dying with hunger! — Aristotle.

Didn't we all grow up understanding that bribes and payoffs - - by whatever name or rationale - - were bad. And that people were supposed to be the focal point of society, not money? — Ray Bourhis

Even the humblest men have a strange reason behind greed. Every man thinks money solves problems - and every man thinks not just of himself, but his next three generations - there is a probability he will live to see those generations - and he wants to care for them in times of strife. — Siddharth Katragadda

Like it or not, war (cold or hot) is the most powerful funding driver in the public arsenal. Lofty goals such as curiosity, discovery, exploration, and science can get you money for modest-size projects, provided they resonate with the political and cultural views of the moment. But big, expensive activities are inherently long term, and require sustained investment that must survive economic fluctuations and changes in the political winds. In all eras, across time and culture, only war, greed, and the celebration of royal or religious power have fulfilled that funding requirement. Today, the power of kings is supplanted by elected governments, and the power of religion is often expressed in nonarchitectural undertakings, leaving war and greed to run the show. Sometimes those two drivers work hand in hand, as in the art of profiteering from the art of war. But war itself remains the ultimate and most compelling rationale. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

As God was expunged from American life, idols came in to fill the void; idols of sensuality, idols of greed, of money, of success, comfort, materialism, pleasure, sexual immorality, self-worship, self-obsession. The sacred increasingly disappeared, and the profane took its place. — Jonathan Cahn

My dear," said my mother suddenly, "take the money and run on. I am going to faint." This was certainly the end for us both, I thought. How I cursed the cowardice of the neigbors; how I blamed my poor mother for her honesty and her greed, for her past foolhardiness and present weakness! We were just at the little bridge, by good fortune, and I helped her, tottering as she was, to the edge of the bank, where, sure enough, she gave a sigh and fell on my shoulder. I do not know how I found the strength to do it all, and I am afraid it was roughly done, but I managed to drag her down to the bank and a little way under the arch. Farther I could not mover her, for the bridge was too low to let me do more than crawl below it. So there we had to stay--my mother almost entirely visible and both of us within earshot of the inn. — Robert Louis Stevenson

They overdid everything, especially their greed for money. All three generations of Rumanian Hohenzollerns had a passion for wealth and were incredibly stingy besides, Carol more so than the others. — R.G. Waldeck

The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself. — Benjamin Graham

The humans are an arrogant species, defined by violence and greed. They have taken their home planet, the only one they currently have access to, and placed it on the road to destruction. They have created a world of divisions and categories and have continually failed to see the similarities between themselves. They have developed technology at a rate too fast for human psychology to keep up with, and yet they still pursue advancement for advancement's sake, and for the pursuit of the money and fame they all crave so much. — Matt Haig

New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed ... a race for rent. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Sin makes our armor vulnerable to attack from Satan, who then gains permission from God to attack us in the area where we have failed to uphold righteousness. If we break down in moral purity, Satan comes in and establishes a stronghold. If we give place to bitterness and unwillingness to forgive, we break fellowship with God and others. If we become money-focused, we fall into greed and deception. Sin is a vicious cycle that leaves us weak and vulnerable to ever more sin. — Os Hillman

I was simultaneously elated and depressed, a common enough state of mind these days when people are offered a great deal of money to do something repugnant. — James Hamilton-Paterson

Idle Jeffrey, when asking his cousin for money: "I fear I have not a mercenary tendency."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cousin, Plantagenet Palliser: "Men must have mercenary tendencies or they would not have bred. The man who plows, so he may live, does so because, luckily, he has mercenary tendencies."

Jeffrey: "Just so, but you see I am less lucky than the plowman."

Palliser: "There is no vulgar error so vulgar, that is to say common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. The desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combines with honesty, and they cannot take you astray. — Anthony Trollope

There are abusive individuals whose worst little demons are greed, sloth,envy, gluttony, pride and wrath enslaved by their god which is money. They usually set their false assumptions, wrong judgments, gossips and lies forceful than the ones who hold the truth but what they missed out is that the victims of their aggressions, the targets of their wrong accusations and the recipients of their repetitive harassments carry what is truly essential and what lives longer, that is: truth and goodness, both of which shall always prevail against their vicious, evil manners. — Angelica Hopes

Greed for the things money can buy ("natural wealth") is a bad thing, but it is finite. You can only enjoy a finite amount of food or drink, houses or cars, or even sex. But greed for money ("artificial wealth") is infinite. You can always want more. It's like a drug: you have to have higher and higher doses of it to give you the same "buzz" you used to get from little bits of it. And this never stops. It is Hell's false infinite. — Peter Kreeft

There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing. — Wallace Stegner

Or can it be thought that they who heap up an useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it is to bring them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it? The delight they find is only a false shadow of joy. Those are no better whose error is somewhat different from the former, and who hide it, out of their fear of losing it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the earth, or rather the restoring to it again, it being thus cut off from being useful, either to its owner or to the rest of mankind? And yet the owner having hid it carefully, is glad, because he thinks he is now sure of it. It if should be stole, the owner, though he might live perhaps ten years after the theft, of which he knew nothing, would find no difference between his having or losing it; for both ways it was equally useless to him. — Thomas More

A deception arises, sometimes innocently but collaboratively, sometimes with cynical premeditation. Usually the victim is caught up in a powerful emotion - wonder, fear, greed, grief. Credulous acceptance of baloney can cost you money; that's what P.T. Barnum meant when he said, There's a sucker born every minute'. But it can be much more dangerous than that, and when governments and societies lose the capacity for critical thinking, the results can be catastrophic, however sympathetic we may be to those who have bought the baloney. — Carl Sagan

Listen in close, Wall Street Conquistadors, you're spreading like vapor up through people's floors, you're moving en masse under the cracks of our doors and grabbing our children to work in your stores, feeding the needy to make them your whores, but you need to remember the grave you're digging is yours. — Trevor D. Richardson

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop. — James Joyce

Avoid greed and fear. These are the investor's Achilles heels. Keeping all your money in the bank earning 3% interest is just as foolish as dumping your entire savings into the market thinking you'll make a quick buck. — Nancy Dunnan

Motives for greed and selfishness are often attributed to toil and source of riches. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The problem: If you've an antique for sale, then, sad to relate, the world isn't your oyster. It's not that easy. Even if somebody gives you the National Gallery, your options are still very, very limited. Okay, you can sell the Old Masters, set up a trust, buy your favorite brewery. But that's strictly it. You're limited by honesty on one hand and law - that hobble of sanity - on the other. — Jonathan Gash

I disagree. You want to bring back someone that you've lost. You might want money. Maybe you want women. Or, you might want to protect the world. These are all common things people want. Things that their hearts desire. Greed may not be good, but it's not so bad, either. You humans think greed is just for money and power! But everyone wants something they don't have. — Hiromu Arakawa

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they'll have jobs and get enough money to buy things. — Philip Slater

The prodigality of millionaires is comparable only to their greed of gain. Let some whim or passion seize them and money is of no account. In fact these Croesuses find whims and passions harder to come by than gold. — Honore De Balzac

Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal. — Charles Dickens

People who are distracted by door money, neglect the production and the audience. Money becomes their god. They sacrifice their reputation in favor of building revenue. Believe me; the former is more difficult to recover if lost. — Carlos Wallace

[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite. — Paul Krugman

Philosopher Jean Baudrillard made a similar observation about the use of material goods as symbols of immaterial values. He noted that any given material object has two kinds of value: it has use value (the amount of utility which can be derived from the good), and it has sign value (a value based on what the object means to the person who owns it.) Advertisers constantly attempt to increase the amount that people will pay for products by infusing them with artificial sign value. Emotional branding, for example, is the practice of using images to link a product with a positive emotional state, so that people will unthinkingly purchase the product when they crave the emotion. — Melinda Selmys

The amount of gold someone has is never the issue, but rather the love of it and the want of more for personal gain that consumes the hearts of many good people. — A.J. Darkholme

War, money and greed that is the modern heinous Trinity, and they are inseparable these days. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

These are roots of all evil, hatred and greed, for money, for the construction and for the sale of weapons. This should make us all think, who is behind it all? — Pope Francis

As Earth warriors, we choose to be participants in the ancient battle between good and evil. On our side stand the waters and wind, and all things wild and of the Earth. On the other side, consumed with greed and in persuit of power, control and money, stand all the dark forces that lay waste to Her. — Rod Coronado

I had never seen more clearly how streets like these were made for and by amoral cowards, men who made money in rubber or sugar or copper or steel in remote places then returned here where no one questioned their practices, their treatment of others, their greed. — Lily King

One's relationship with money is lifelong, it colors one's sense of identity, it shapes one's attitude to other people, it connects and splits generations; money is the arena in which greed and generosity are played out, in which wisdom is exercised and folly committed. Freedom, desire, power, status, work, possession: these huge ideas that rule life are enacted, almost always, in and around money. — John Armstrong

Everything failed to subdue me. Soon everything seemed dull: another sunrise, the lives of heroes, falling in love, war, the discoveries people made about each other. The only thing that didn't bore me, obviously enough, was how much money Tim Price made, and yet in its obviousness it did. There wasn't a clear, identifiable emotion within me, except for greed and, possibly, total disgust. I had all the characteristics of a human being - flesh, blood, skin, hair - but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning. Something horrible was happening and yet I couldn't figure out why - I couldn't put my finger on it. — Bret Easton Ellis