Quotes About Greed

Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

These leaders are like the drug lords who ruled America's ghettos in the crack age, men (and some women) interested in just two things: staying in power, and hoovering up enough of what's left of the cash on their blocks to drive around in an Escalade or a 633i for however long they have left.

People aren't pissed just to be pissed. They're mad because a tiny group of crooks on Wall Street built themselves beach houses in the Hamptons through a crude fraud scheme that decimated their retirement funds, caused property values in their neighborhoods to collapse and caused over four million people to be put in foreclosure.

The notion of "long-term greedy" vanished into thin air as the game became about getting your check before the melon hit the pavement.

Goldman is not a company of geniuses, it's a company of criminals. And far from being the best fruit of a democratic, capitalist society, it's the apotheosis of the Grifter Era, a parasitic enterprise that has attached itself to the American government and taxpayer and shamelessly engorged itself on us all.

Greenspan's rise is instead a tale of a gerbilish mirror-gazer who flattered and bullshitted his way up the Matterhorn of American power and then, once he got to the top, feverishly jacked himself off to the attentions of Wall Street for twenty consecutive years—in the process laying the intellectual foundation for a generation of orgiastic greed and overconsumption and turning the Federal Reserve into a permanent bailout mechanism for the super-rich.

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

Our leaders know we're turning into a giant ghetto and they are taking every last hubcap they can get their hands on before the rest of us wake up and realize what's happened.

The mistake our politicians so often make with these industry leaders is in thinking they are interested in, or respectful of, the power of government. All they want is to keep stealing. If you can offer them the government's seal of approval on that, they'll take it. But if you can't, well, they'll take that too.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

I don't think that fundamentalism has anything to do with Jesus Christ. They call themselves Christians, but if that's Christian, count me out. Fundamentalism is built on fear and greed. They're telling you to give them your money otherwise you're going to hell.

Avarice is the sphincter of the heart.

That proves to be most wasted which is covetously and distrustfully spared.

The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. —GANDHI T

They say great times make great men. I don't buy it. I saw a lot of weakness, a lot of filth. People who should have risen to the challenge and either couldn't or wouldn't. Greed, fear, stupidity and hate. I saw it before the war, I see it today. [...] I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.

I looked again at the library, my vision made real, beautiful yes, but a terrible betrayal. I would never be able to come here again, I knew. Goldie and my uncle had been cruel and avaricious, but their greed was not so personal as Ellis's. Not so intimate. And yet, I knew also, in a way I had not known before, that its very intimacy made me stronger. I would not forgive him this,

doesn't he come for us? Why does he want us to be poor?

I bet a mean queen locked him up in the tower because he wouldn't give up all his loot.

There are two choices: to be human, made in the image of God, with Jesus; warp to be in human, consumed with greed and on aware of the pain that is inflicted upon others. Put in simple options, it is to be human and forgive, make peace in spite of all hatred, or to be in human and kill, dividing the spoils. To be dead before you die.

A golden tomb is useful only for the thieves!

A little spoon for a cup of soup teaches to be patient; and the big one, to be greedy!

A street without trees is a street only for the sick-minded people whose god is nothing but money!

For ambitious and greedy, there exists no summit, but only climbing up perpetually.

That wretched alchemist called money can turn a man's heart into a stone!