Quotes About Greed

We live most days and most of the hours of those days in a world permeated with the making and purchasing of idols.

What is described in Scripture as the basic sin, the sin of taking things into your own hands, being your own god, grabbing what is there while you can get it, is now described as basic wisdom: improve yourself by whatever means you are able; get ahead regardless of the price, take care of me first.

21-23 Oh! Can you believe it? The chaste city has become a whore! She was once all justice, everyone living as good neighbors, And now they're all at one another's throats. Your coins are all counterfeits. Your wine is watered down. Your leaders are turncoats who keep company with crooks. They sell themselves to the highest bidder and grab anything not nailed down. They never stand up for the homeless, never stick up for the defenseless.

When you grab all you can get, that's what happens: the more you get, the less you are.

The only thing more terrifying than the person who has nothing is the person who has everything. Things can only get worse for them. The more you have, the more you have to lose. And in the end everything must be lost. Is it better to not want anything at all? Maybe, but what about the rest of us, who have some things, which we judiciously manage, like archivists?

Many returned after the war to reap the gruesome rewards of what has been called a 'golden harvest', digging up the remains of the victims and sifting through the ash and bones to find any gold teeth or valuable materials that had been overlooked when their bodies and possessions had first been looted by the Nazis.

People have evolved into something selfish, greedy and intolerant. People are unaccepting, because of religion, race, gender, sexual orientation... I've seen it in punk clubs, and I've seen it in the world.

Mountaintop removal coal operations enrich only a handful of elites while impoverishing everyone else in their proximity.

Almost half our representatives in Washington apparently know more about science than our scientists. Or they pretend to, because big corporations give them a lot of money to make sure they can keep doing the destructive things that they do.

I think Don King has always been an idiot in my mind. He's always been about money. I don't think he cares about anything else but himself.

Our politics has been greatly impacted, for the worse, by big money and the concentration of big money.

Quite a few plays I have written have an implicit critique of capitalism in that, if you follow it through to its end, what happens to the people who are left behind?

I didn't want much. I wanted much more. In fact, I wanted everything.

Like everyone else, rich people respond to incentives.

No writer has a right to make that much money. Indeed, without diabolical assistance, no writer can.

When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs.

Even when we know what is right, too often we fail to act. More often we grab greedily for the day, letting tomorrow bring what it will, putting off the unpleasant and unpopular.

Private Vices, Public Benefits.

Beaucoup de gens croient que la pelleteuse et la bétonneuse ne pensent pas. ces gens se trompent: elles pensent. Elles pensent que si elles ne travaillent pas, elles ne gagneraient pas d'Argent, et qu'alors leurs esclaves ne pourraient plus acheter l'huile et l'essence sont elles ont besoin pour vivre et continuer à penser aux choses sérieuses

Ce n'est pas parce qu'on est pauvre qu'on est vertueux, et ce n'est pas parce qu'on est riche qu'on est égoïste.

she'd seen people stand on the shoulders of hate and pluck money and power from the very top shelves of the universe.

You can't have it all. You can't get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can't continue sending our jobs to China while millions are looking for work. You can't hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens while there are massive unmet needs on every corner of this nation. Your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America if you refuse to accept your responsibilities.

We are living in a nation which worships wealth rather than caring for the poor. I don't think that is the nation we should be living in.

when we talk about justice, we have to, in my view, understand that there is no justice when so few have so much and so many have so little.