Quotes About Greed

To Jurgis the packers had been the equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people.

What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat.

jealousies and hatreds; there was no loyalty or decency anywhere about it, there was no place in it where a man counted for anything against a dollar. And worse than there being no decency, there was not even any honesty. The reason for that? Who could say? It must have been old Durham in the beginning; it was a heritage which the self-made merchant had left to his son, along with his millions.

I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed!

It was the same type of men all over the world. They tried to grab on another's coal and steel and oil and gold; yet, the moment they were threatened by their wage slaves anywhere, they got together to fight against the common peril. Do it with the army, do it with gangsters, do it with the workers' own leaders, buying them or seducing them with titles, honors, and applause!

There were a few honest papers, but they reached only a small public; the big press was in the hands of the big interests, and told the people whatever suited the purposes of the masters of steel and munitions and oil.

The more things had cost the better they were and the more they were talked about, which was the best of all. "Three million dollars!" people would say about the palace, and their voices would be lowered as if they were speaking of the dwelling place of deity.

Their frail human nature was subjected to a strain greater than it was made for; the fires of greed had been lighted in their hearts, and fanned to a white heat that melted every principle and every law.

It means that greed and jealousy continue to rule the world, and people spend their substance building fences to keep the rest of the world out.

One might look at a Rembrandt picture, or hear a Beethoven symphony, without depriving others of the privilege; but one couldn't become an oil king without taking oil away from others.

Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.

Large sums passed through his hands. Nevertheless, nothing changed his way of life or added the slightest luxury to his simple life. Quite the contrary, As there is always more misery at the lower end than humanity at the top, everything was given away before it was received, like water on parched soil. No matter how much money came to him, he never had enough. And then he robbed himself.

Hence, that crown is the money of hell.

There is M. Geborand purchasing paradise for a sou.

As cidades produzem homens ferozes, porque produzem homens corruptos.

Ma non basta essere cattivi, per prosperare.

Your're successful beyond your wildest dreams and it still isn't enough?

The more she got, the more she wanted, the more afraid she was of losing it, and the harder she worked.

We wouldn't have people like the big growers making all the money and people like us doing all the work. We starve while the rich get richer.

what the left and right respectively love and hate are mostly flip sides of the same coins minted around 1967. All the ideas we call countercultural barged onto the cultural main stage in the 1960s and '70s, it's true, but what we don't really register is that so did extreme Christianity, full-blown conspiracism, libertarianism, unembarrassed greed, and more. Anything goes meant anything went.

Starting in the 1970s, the Friedman Doctrine and its extrapolations freed and encouraged businesspeople and the rich to go ahead and conform to the left-wing caricatures of them, to be rapacious and amoral without shame.

As the 1990s began, the right stayed angry and upset and kept growing in size and power thanks to the primitives, the bigots, the Protestant fundamentalists and cowboy commando conspiracy fantasists. But the grown-ups on the right, the economic right, corporate leaders and the rest of the rich, kept their eye on the prize—less taxation, less regulation of business, greed is good—and they maintained control of the party.

more than any act of God it is human activity (corruption, greed, exploitation) that continues to provoke the greatest disasters in Mexico City.

I fear that I may sound gruff to you, but the White man, what Sweet Medicine called the Earth Men, has destroyed both our People and the land with greed and short-sightedness, and in the end will destroy himself as well unless the hearts of your people undergo a spiritual awakening.