Quotes about greed

Satiety is a mongrel that barks at the heels of plenty.

— Minna Antrim

Avarice is the vice of declining years.

— George Bancroft

Greed is all right, by the way I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.

— Ivan F. Boesky

Nothing retains less of desire in art, in science, than this will to industry, booty, possession.

— Andre Breton

So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice.

— Lord Byron

I have news for the forces of greed and the defenders of the status quo; your time has come and gone. It's time for change in America.

— Bill Clinton

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

— Charles Caleb Colton

Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.

— Cyril Connolly

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

The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.

— Anatole France

The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system.

— Milton Friedman

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

— Erich Fromm

If your desires be endless, your cares and fears will be so too.

— Thomas Fuller

Avarice is the sphincter of the heart.

— Matthew Green

The avarice person is ever in want; let your desired aim have a fixed limit.

— Horace

Avarice, the spur of industry.

— David Hume

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

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

— Samuel Johnson

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

— John Maynard Keynes

The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.

— Niccolo Machiavelli

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker.

— Malcolm X

It is not the want, but rather abundance that creates avarice.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

To hazard much to get much has more of avarice than wisdom.

— William Penn

God forgives the sin of gluttony.

— Catalan Proverb

Big mouthfuls often choke.

— Italian Proverb

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

For greed all nature is too little.

— Seneca

Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself are much condemned to have an itching palm.

— William Shakespeare

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

It is of the nobility of man's soul that he is insatiable: for he hath a benefactor so prone to give, that he delighteth in us for asking. Do not your inclinations tell you that the WORLD is yours? Do you not covet all? Do you not long to have it; to enjoy it; to overcome it? To what end do men gather riches, but to multiply more? Do they not like Pyrrhus the King of Epire, add house to house and lands to lands, that they may get it all?

— Thomas Traherne

The point is that you can't be too greedy.

— Donald Trump

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

— Voltaire

I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.

— Simone De Beauvoir

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

— Henry David Thoreau