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Quotes About Greed

The frantic summer fishermen who pay a price and glut the decks with fish in the afternoon wonder vaguely what to do with them, sacks and baskets and mountains of porgies and blows and blackfish, sea robins, and even slender dogfish, all to be torn up greedily, to die, and to be thrown back for the waiting gulls. The gulls swarm and wait, knowing the summer fisherman will sicken of their plenty. Who wants to clean and scale a sack of fish? It's harder to give away fish than it is to catch them.
~ John Steinbeck
The great artists of finance like Morgan and Rockefeller weren't deflected. They wanted and got money, just simple money. What they did with it afterward is another matter. I've always felt they got scared of the ghost they raised and tried to buy it off.
~ John Steinbeck
And all their love was thinned with money.
~ John Steinbeck
We in the United States have done so much to destroy our own resources, our timber, our land, our fishes, that we should be taken as a horrible example and our methods avoided by any government and people enlightened enough to envision a continuing economy. With our own resources we have been prodigal, and our country will not soon lose the scars of our grasping stupidity.
~ John Steinbeck
The bank - or the Company - needs - wants -insists - must have - as though the bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them... The banks were machines and masters all at the same time... They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don't get it they die... It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.
~ John Steinbeck
The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.
~ John Steinbeck
What have I to fear but starvation? Kino asked.
~ John Steinbeck
I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don't need... Stuff settin' out there, you jus' feel like buyin' it whether you need it or not. -Uncle John
~ John Steinbeck
Having too many THINGS, he says, [Americans] spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.
~ John Steinbeck
When he first got the job with Kate, Joe looked for the weaknesses on which he lived—vanity, voluptuousness, anxiety or conscience, greed, hysteria. He knew they were there because she was a woman.
~ John Steinbeck
Yes, but the bank is only made of men. No, you're wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it. The
~ John Steinbeck
Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels.
~ John Steinbeck
It was his first sharp experience with the rule that without money you cannot fight money.
~ John Steinbeck
The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.
~ John Steinbeck
It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.
~ John Steinbeck
no se puede luchar contra el dinero sin él
~ John Steinbeck
The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.
~ John Steinbeck
It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
~ John Steinbeck
The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." "Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?
~ John Steinbeck
What made 'em bad was they needed stuff.
~ John Steinbeck
Funny thing. I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don't need.
~ John Steinbeck
Sex is like money; only too much is enough.
~ John Updike
That's the genius of the capitalist system: Either you're rich, or you want to be, or you think you ought to be.
~ John Updike
Our ability to touch love and kindness and be touched by them lies buried below our own fears and hurts, below our greed and our hatreds, below our desperate clinging to the illusion that we are separate and alone.
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn