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Greed Quotes by Famous Authors

1. “How much money does it take to make a man happy? Just one more dollar.”

John D. Rockefeller

2. “A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm’s length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance!”

Charles Lamb

3. “The businessman bought at ten and was happy to get out at twelve; the mathematician saw his ten rise to eighteen, but didn’t sell because he wanted to double his ten to twenty.”

V.S. Naipaul

4. “Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss.”

Democritus

5. “It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all.”

Democritus

6. “People sometimes rationalize their greed by saying that it is all for the good of their children but this is nothing but an excuse they use to make their despicable actions appear respectable and praiseworthy.”

Democritus

7. “The man enslaved to wealth can never be honest.”

Democritus

8. “For dealing with blessings which come to us from outside we need a firm foundation based on reason and education; without this foundation, people keep on seeking these blessings and heaping them up but can never satisfy the insatiable appetites of their souls.”

Plutarch

9. “Oh, what a world full of pain we create, for a little taste upon the tongue.”

Plutarch

10. “So inconsiderable a thing is fortune in respect of human nature, and so insufficient to give content to a covetous mind, that an empire of that mighty extent and sway could not satisfy the ambition of two men.”

Plutarch

11. “The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors.”

Plutarch

12. “Riches for the most part are hurtful to them that possess them.”

Plutarch

13. “When the strong box contains no more both friends and flatterers shun the door.”

Plutarch

14. “One is shy of asking men under sentence what they have been sentenced for; and in the same way it is awkward to ask very rich people what they want so much money for, why they make such a poor use of their wealth, why they don’t give it up, even when they see in it their unhappiness; and if they begin a conversation about it themselves, it is usually embarrassing, awkward, and long.”

Anton Chekhov

15. “Those born blind cannot see; similarly blind are those in the grip of lust. Proud men have no perception of evil; and those bent on acquiring riches see no sin in their actions.”

Chanakya

16. “The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there.”

Chanakya

17. “The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they’re too damned greedy.”

Herbert Hoover

18. “Is it not madness and the worst form of derangement to want so much though you can hold so little? Therefore, though you may increase your income and extend your estates, you will never increase the capacity of your bodies.”

Seneca

19. “Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.”

Seneca

20. “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor.”

Seneca

21. “Are you really going to tell me that philosophy taught the world to use keys and bolts on doors – which was surely nothing but a signal for greed?”

Seneca

22. “For greed, all nature is too little.”

Seneca

23. “It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a man’s safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is another’s and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already. You ask what is the proper limit to a person’s wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, what is enough.”

Seneca

24. “Hope has often caused the love of gain to ruin men.”

Sophocles

25. “The penalty is death: yet hope of gain Hath lured men to their ruin oftentimes.”

Sophocles

26. “More men come to doom through dirty profits than are kept by them.”

Sophocles

27. “Of all vile things current on earth, none is so vile as money.”

Sophocles

28. “Money: There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.”

Sophocles

29. “Ill-gotten gains work evil.”

Sophocles

30. “There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.”

Sophocles

31. “Those whose life is long still strive for gain, and for all mortals all things take second place to money.”

Sophocles

32. “Money is the worst currency that ever grew among mankind. This sacks cities, this drives men from their homes, this teaches and corrupts the worthiest minds to turn base deeds.”

Sophocles

33. “Whoever has a keen eye for profits, is blind in relation to his craft.”

Sophocles

34. “Revolt is the mirror in which greed is forced to see itself.”

Alice Walker

35. “Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.”

Alice Walker

36. “Can people who hunger so desperately for what other people have ever have enough?”

Alice Walker

37. “Greed has poisoned men’s souls.”

Charlie Chaplin

38. “Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.”

Charlie Chaplin

39. “To those who can hear me, I say – do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.”

Charlie Chaplin

40. “He who covets is a poor wretch, because he longs for what he can not have. But he who has naught, and covets naught, is rich, although you may think him but a lowly knave.”

Geoffrey Chaucer

41. “Now let us touch on the vice of Flattery, which comes not gladly from the heart, but from fear or greed. Flattery is generally insincere praise. Flatterers be the Devil’s nurses, who nourish his children with the milk of adulation.”

Geoffrey Chaucer

42. “What difference is there betwixt an idolater and an avaricious man, but that the idolater has, perhaps, one or two idols, whereas the avaricious man has many?”

Geoffrey Chaucer

43. “He who embraces too much, retains too little.”

Geoffrey Chaucer

44. “When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of an ounce.”

Henry Ward Beecher

45. “Most people are not aware of the nature of their longing. When their longing finds unconscious expression, we call this greed, conquest, ambition. When their longing finds conscious expression, we call this yoga.”

Sadhguru

46. “A man so habituated to corruption that he would happily pay for the pleasure of selling himself.”

Gustave Flaubert

47. “Knowing money is a root of evil, in Christian charity, he’d take away whatever things may hinder your salvation.”

Moliere

48. “Gold is the key, whatever else we try; and that sweet metal aids the conqueror in every case, in love as well as war.”

Moliere

49. “He must have killed a lot of men to have made so much money.”

Moliere

50. “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

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