Site uses cookies to provide basic functionality.

OK
1 ▲ ▼
Link Quote Stars Tags Author
2854058 Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed. earth man greed inspirational indulgence conservation environment bounty need Mahatma Gandhi
58f1f49 "The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder." greed needs materialism selfishness vice Fyodor Dostoyevsky
a0c492b That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms. poverty wealth sorrow greed cring fables tears Khaled Hosseini
58016d5 Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves. compassion greed humanity inspirational volunteerism charity helping-others Horace Mann
0fec081 I find it odd- the greed of mankind. People only like you for as long as they perceive they can get what they want from you. Or for as long as they perceive you are who they want you to be. But I like people for all of their changing surprises, the thoughts in their heads, the warmth that changes to cold and the cold that changes to warmth... for being human. The rawness of being human delights me. mankind rawness humanism greed humanity inspirational-attitude inspirational-life inspirational-quotes inspirational raw human-nature C. JoyBell C.
7d3b19d They had battled and bloodied one another, they had kept secrets, broken hearts, lied, betrayed, exiled, they had walked away, said goodbye and sworn it was forever, and somehow, every time, they had mended, they had forgiven, they had survived. Some mistakes could never be fixed - some, but not all. Some people can't be driven away, no matter how hard you try. Some friendships won't break. greed friendship end-of-series robin-wasserman seven-deadly-sins sad Robin Wasserman
f61bae6 I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind. understanding greed insight Michel de Montaigne
b213112 Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun. greed failed-systems class Kurt Vonnegut
870132d Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want. want greed work labor weariness need vice evil Voltaire
c1af06b The best is the enemy of good. good greed insatiability desires best Voltaire
625b856 I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity. racism poverty greed criminal-justice-system cycle-of-violence imprisonment retribution homelessness unemployment jail incarceration punishment justice prison desperation Howard Zinn
7d31dfc What win I, if I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy? Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown, Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down? greed fleeting-possession gain William Shakespeare
966a333 Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it. wealth greed G.K. Chesterton
b4f322b The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others morality greed indictment nihilistic dystopia Iain M. Banks
96c23fc She never forgets a slight, real or imagined. She takes caution for cowardice and dissent for defiance. And she is greedy. Greedy for power, for honour, for love. greed love tyrion-lannister cersei-lannister power George R.R. Martin
556c285 We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable. greed egotism negotiation John F. Kennedy
da2c685 Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling. money greed love Gustave Flaubert
1b4a9e4 "Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong." However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts. ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart." stereotypes men temptation women greed beauty clichés drunkenness social-norms misogyny hypocrisy double-standards immorality gender lust sexuality wine Anonymous
d1b93f1 The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by deathwatch beetles, and thrive the centuries. They were the men with the leather-ribbon whips who sweated up the Pyramids seasoning it with other people's salt and other people's cracked hearts. They coursed Europe on the White Horses of the Plague. They whispered to Caesar that he was mortal, then sold daggers at half-price in the grand March sale. Some must have been lazing clowns, foot props for emperors, princes, and epileptic popes. Then out on the road, Gypsies in time, their populations grew as the world grew, spread, and there was more delicious variety of pain to thrive on. The train put wheels under them and here they run down the log road out of the Gothic and baroque; look at their wagons and coaches, the carving like medieval shrines, all of it stuff once drawn by horses, mules, or, maybe, men. slavery greed sweat nightmares horror Ray Bradbury
28ac45e There was no safety. There was no pride. All there was, was money. Everything became money, and money became everything. Money treated us as if we were things, and we died. money terry-pratchett greed life philosophy-religion going-postal Terry Pratchett
a47c82e "Dragon kind was no less cruel than mankind. The Dragon, at least, acted from bestial need rather than bestial greed." ~ A thought by Lessa ~" greed Anne McCaffrey
c6dfcaa It didn't occur to me until later that there's another truth, very simple: greed in a good cause is still greed. greed hypocrecy Stephen King
795012c These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the dew began- Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of Man. greed crocodile kite curiosity Rudyard Kipling
9e709eb Humankind has not learned about balance, let alone practiced it. It is guided by greed and ambition, steered by fear. In this way it will eventually destroy itself. But nature will survive; at least the plants will. nature people greed fear life journy ambition humankind emotions Brian L. Weiss
9874143 "Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in soutern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison?" murder greed gems precious-stones jewels sherlock-holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
338a657 God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation. compassion greed stewardship evangelism giving sharing starvation gospel hunger prosperity need John Piper
348f379 Those that much covet are with gain so fond, For what they have not, that which they possess They scatter and unloose it from their bond, And so, by hoping more, they have but less; Or, gaining more, the profit of excess Is but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain, That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain. greed gain insatiability possessions excess entitlement William Shakespeare
5d7500b There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world, Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. money murder greed poison William Shakespeare
e521780 The town is mobbed out with Saturday shoppers looking for Christmas bargains. You can almost breathe in the raw greed which hangs in the air like vapour. As the late afternoon darkness falls, the lights look tacky and sinister. greed tacky shopping Irvine Welsh
dd714f8 "We've had enough." He took back the report and jammed it under his arm. "We've had a bellyful, in fact." "And like everyone who's had enough," said Control as Alleline noisily left the room, "he wants more." greed saturation desires dissatisfaction John le Carré
a0884cc "Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of "greed" is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned--never to those wanting to take other people's money in taxes or to those wishing to live on the largesse dispensed from such taxation. No amount of taxation is ever described as "greed" on the part of government or the clientele of government." greed taxes Thomas Sowell
10f492e Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. wealth greed John Kenneth Galbraith
27c66a4 It does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants want greed restraint Louisa May Alcott
2096865 You see Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set-up here. The greed part - a kid pays a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolates. The cruel part - watching two guys hitting each other, maybe hurting each other, while they're safe in the bleachers. That's why it works, Carter, because we're all bastards. violence greed Robert Cormier
ab2689f Until a few months ago we had a code of honor, and even the worst ruffians behaved with decency. You could leave your gold in a tent with no guard and no one would touch it, but now all that has changed. The law of the jungle rules, the only ideology is greed. Don't let yourself be parted from your weapons, and always travel in pairs or groups, because this is a land of thieves. greed honesty community Isabel Allende
f70b9d1 They can talk shit about each other behind the others' backs, but when it comes down to it, money is the one true race and everyone down here is the color of greenbacks and as tall as mountains. money relationships greed society pride Richard Kadrey
a3d0dcd There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing. illusion greed Wallace Stegner
2ce8d06 This was 1990 the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed. greed communism Bill Bryson
8ee5af5 And what, O Queen, are those things that are dear to a man? Are they not bubbles? Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted? For height leads on to height, and there is not resting-place among them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number. mankind want greed humanity learning life endeavors things-that-matter ladder materialism H. Rider Haggard
26a9f68 Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves. greed Victor Hugo
8d79680 "Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us down again. Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we are doomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of finding perfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won't be disappointed." If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But after all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted a mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowed to myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, not God, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, or dominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, to take what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'd been kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed, deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now." perfection fate defeat greed happiness decieved poisened used years-of-struggle towmorrow great-expectations defeated vow captive doomed wanting striving doom vows years dreaming wants put-downs expectations longing V.C. Andrews
5d64a0e "Over recent years, [there's been] a strong tendency to require assessment of children and teachers so that [teachers] have to teach to tests and the test determines what happens to the child, and what happens to the teacher...that's guaranteed to destroy any meaningful educational process: it means the teacher cannot be creative, imaginative, pay attention to individual students' needs, that a student can't pursue things [...] and the teacher's future depends on it as well as the students'...the people who are sitting in the offices, the bureaucrats designing this - they're not evil people, but they're working within a system of ideology and doctrines, which turns what they're doing into something extremely harmful [...] the assessment itself is completely artificial; it's not ranking teachers in accordance with their ability to help develop children who reach their potential, explore their creative interests and so on [...] you're getting some kind of a 'rank,' but it's a 'rank' that's mostly meaningless, and the very ranking itself is harmful. It's turning us into individuals who devote our lives to achieving a rank, not into doing things that are valuable and important. It's highly destructive...in, say, elementary education, you're training kids this way [...] I can see it with my own children: when my own kids were in elementary school (at what's called a good school, a good-quality suburban school), by the time they were in third grade, they were dividing up their friends into 'dumb' and 'smart.' You had 'dumb' if you were lower-tracked, and 'smart' if you were upper-tracked [...] it's just extremely harmful and has nothing to do with education. Education is developing your own potential and creativity. Maybe you're not going to do well in school, and you'll do great in art; that's fine. It's another way to live a fulfilling and wonderful life, and one that's significant . The whole idea is wrong in itself; it's creating something that's called 'economic man': the 'economic man' is somebody who rationally calculates how to improve his/her own status, and status means (basically) wealth. So you rationally calculate what kind of choices you should make to increase your wealth - don't pay attention to anything else - or maybe maximize the amount of goods you have. greed imagination education-reform eye-opening standardized-testing school-reform capitalism human-nature creativity Noam Chomsky
085e644 The worker picked up Pakhom's spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs. poverty wealth greed living life life-and-death dying Leo Tolstoy
5de0b9f Uncouth, clannish, lumbering about the confines of Space and Time with a puzzled expression on his face and a handful of things scavenged on the way from gutters, interglacial littorals, sacked settlements and broken relationships, the Earth-human has no use for thinking except in the service of acquisition. He stands at every gate with one hand held out and the other behind his back, inventing reasons why he should be let in. From the first bunch of bananas, his every sluggish fit or dull fleabite of mental activity has prompted ; and his time has been spent for thousands of years in the construction and sophistication of systems of ideas that will enable him to excuse, rationalize, and moralize the grasping hand. His dreams, those priceless comic visions he has of himself as a being with concerns beyond the material, are no more than furtive cannibals stumbling round in an uncomfortable murk of emotion, trying to eat each other. Politics, religion, ideology -- desperate, edgy attempts to shift the onus of responsibility for his own actions: abdications. His hands have the largest neural representation in the somesthetic cortex, his head the smallest; but he's always trying to hide the one behind the other. greed human-nature thought M. John Harrison
57abe81 The quality of the will to power is, precisely, growth. Achievement is its cancellation. To be, the will to power must increase with each fulfillment, making the fulfillment only a step to a further one. The vaster the power gained, the vaster the appetite for more. satisfaction greed growth-ideology tao growth power Ursula K. Le Guin
2609989 And then the queen wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into that man, the boy whose gentle hand had comforted her childhood hurts, the boy whose frightened voice had cried out to her at the end of his life, as if he wondered why he had gotten lost inside himself, as if he realized that it was too, too late to get out again. grief greed death saddest-thing the-princess-and-the-bear lost-innocence the-end too-late growing-up regret lost Orson Scott Card
8923e45 "Just as sex is a God-given instinct for the prolongation of the human race, so the desire for property as a prolongation of one's ego is a natural right sanctioned by natural law. A person is free on the inside because he can call his soul his own; he is free on the outside because he can call property his own. Internal freedom is based upon the fact that "I am"; external freedom is based on the fact that "I have." But just as the excesses of flesh produce lust, for lust is sex in the wrong place, so there can be a deordination of the desire for property until it becomes greed, avarice, and capitalistic aggression." -- sex greed property lust Fulton J. Sheen
f76b165 In the immediate nearness of the gold, all else had been forgotten [...], and I could not doubt that he hoped to seize upon the treasure, find and board the under cover of night, cut every honest throat about that island, and sail away as he had at first intended, laden with crimes and riches. greed piracy Robert Louis Stevenson
41bdc7f We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't a man. The bank isn't like a man. Yes, but the bank is only made of men. greed the-grapes-of-wrath capitalism John Steinbeck
2b0f7cb "Marty, my mother used to say "Never get greedy with God." I think what she meant was "Don't dare ask for more if you already have what you need." " greed god need James Patterson
f6cb304 For avarice begins where poverty ends. poverty greed Honoré de Balzac
9d2006f Perhaps he has confused making money with freedom. freedom greed John Charles Chasteen
ccc173e The whole idea of government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it. greed P.J. O'Rourke
7a8a9f4 There are men who dig for gold; [Monseigneur Bienvenu] dug for compassion. greed driving-forces gold Victor Hugo
18f0fce They destroy lives with work. What for? They rob men of their lives. What for, I ask? My master--I lost my life in the textile mill of Nefidov--my master presented one prima donna with a golden wash basin. Every one of her toilet articles was gold. That basin holds my life-blood, my very life. That's for what my life went! A man killed me with work in order to comfort his mistress with my blood. He bought her a gold wash basin with my blood. greed work gold revolution Maxim Gorky
010857d "There," she said, waving her hands at the corridor. The expression of delight on her face was a very bad thing to see."You're wrong! You know where your parents are, do you?" she turned and looked at Coraline. "Now," she said, "you're going to stay here for ever and always." greed other-mother trouble Neil Gaiman
027fce6 Take a king or a president or anybody. Put a heavy sack of gold in one hand and a feather-light declaration about freedom in the other. And then an outlaw sticks a pistol in his face and says give me one or the other. Every time--every ten out of ten --he'll hug the sack and throw away the ideals. Because the sack's what's behind the ideals, like the foundation under a building. greed presidents kings Charles Frazier
54b1f36 Whenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need. greed stewardship giving sharing scripture need Randy Alcorn
b70d4e3 There is a philosophy by which many people live their lives, and it is this: life is a shit sandwich, but the more bread you've got, the less shit you have to eat. These people are often selfish brats as kids, and they don't get better with age: think of the shifty-eyed smarmy asshole from the sixth form who grow up to be a merchant banker, or an estate agent, or one of the Conservative Party funny-handshake mine's a Rolex brigade. (This isn't to say that all estate agents, or merchant bankers, or conservatives are selfish, but that these are ways of life that provide opportunities of a certain disposition to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Bear with me.) There is another philosophy by which people live their lives, and it goes thus: You will do as I say or I will hurt you. . . . Let me draw you a Venn diagram with two circles on it, denoting sets of individuals. They overlap: the greedy ones and the authoritarian ones. Let's shade in the intersecting area in a different color and label it: dangerous. Greed isn't automatically dangerous on its won, and petty authoritarians aren't usually dangerous outside their immediate vicinity -- but when you combine the two, you get gangsters and dictators and hate-spewing preachers. hate greed weirdly-prophetic dictatorship Charles Stross
6f6ac42 Terrible times breed terrible things, my lord. war philosophical greed philosophy environment nurture rulers George R.R. Martin
2f38ab7 You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed. war greed paradise Michel Faber
e7b0d14 The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town. sex greed las-vegas nevada Michael Connelly
68ea92f With ceremony, with forms of politeness and reassurance, they borrowed the waters of the River and its little confluents to drink and be clean and irrigate with, using water mindfully, carefully. They lived in a land that answers greed with drought and death. A difficult land: aloof yet sensitive. greed environmental-conservation ursula-k-le-guin water Ursula K. Le Guin
615584f On Wall Street, Clarence was a diamond in a sea of glass, never greedy, never an ambulance-chaser, never the kind of person who deserved to die in the way that he did. morality greed wall-street september-11-attacks glass Rebecca McNutt
999d312 Son, let me tell you a little something about the environment... you can try to fix it up all you want, but it's a waste of time. Sooner or later we'll all be doomed... slaughtered by terrorists, baked in the heat of the sun, nuked until our shadows glow... greed is good. We don't exist to help other people, we exist to grow the hell up, have kids, get old and die, while consuming all we can. Nothing comes after. There's no wrath, no day of reckoning... we just go. POOF! We have no reason to aspire to change the world, son. We'll thrive by feeding off of whatever's available. How else do you think we ended up rich? You don't get ahead by being nice, Thomas. greed nuclear fix environment terrorism rich sun heat nice Rebecca McNutt
b99eb92 Always somewhere there is fire or smoke, insistent reminders of the greed consuming the world greed reminders smoke fire Sy Montgomery
cf51f2c If they succeed, it will not matter if Man becomes immortal. He will have nothing to live for. true immortality greed life man-s-pride page-58 greed-of-man James Edwin Gunn
fc5cb5c "Too late for that now," the Eldest Leprechaun said. "The damage is done. Give the thing a name, and it takes shape. They gave a name and a shape to the force that's always hated us. It's everything we're not. It's New Ireland, it's money for money's sake, brown paper envelopes stuffed full of bribes--the turn of mind that says that the old's only good for theme parks, and the new is all there needs to be. It's been getting stronger and stronger all this while.And now that it's more important to the people living in the city than we are, it's become physically real." greed transformation Andrew M. Greeley
ad09535 "With golden giftes and many a guilefull word words temptation greed gold Edmund Spenser
2b204af I recognized that hunger: a devouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn't find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied. wealth greed corruption power Naomi Novik
75a6320 Money isn't everything. It's the only thing. money greed finance Rebecca McNutt
91f1cc0 Always remember this, Henri. Men trade for profit. They are driven by greed. But debt is about fear, and fear is stronger than greed. The true power, the weapon that defeats all others, is debt. Fools search for gold. The wise man studies debt. That is the key to all business. greed fear debt power fools Edward Rutherfurd
f0b4eb2 In China the egalitarian movement came not just from Zhu's vision, but also the Taoist ideas of balance, as Zhu would always point out. In Travancore it rose out of the Buddhist idea of compassion, in Yingzhou from the Hodenosaunee idea of the equality of all, in Firanja from the idea of justice before God. Everywhere the idea existed, but the world still belonged to a tiny minority of rich; wealth had been accumulating for centuries in a few hands, and the people lucky enough to be born into this old aristocracy lived in the old manner, with the rights of kings now spread among the wealthy of the Earth. Money had replaced land as the basis of power, and money flowed according to its own gravity, its laws of accumulation, which though divorced from nature, were nevertheless the laws ruling most countries on Earth, no matter their religious or philosophical ideas of love, compassion, charity, equality, goodness, and the like. Old Zhu had been right: humanity's behavior was still based on old laws, which determined how food and land and water and surplus wealth around, how the labor of the eight billions was owned. If these laws did not change, the living shell of the earth might well be wrecked, and inherited by seagulls and ants and cockroaches. equality wealth greed power Kim Stanley Robinson
2c93623 Capitalism has a way of letting people view the world through rose-coloured glasses. money greed rose-colored-glasses capitalism ignorance Rebecca McNutt
48f5e08 It seems to me that evil is a kind of ultimate greed, a greed that is so all-encompassing that it can't ever see anything lovely, rare, or precious without wanting to possess it. A greed so total that if it can't possess these things, it will destroy them rather than chance that someone else might have them. And a greed so intense that even having these things never causes it to lessen one iota -- the lovely, the rare and the precious never affect it except to make it want them. greed destruction obsession evil Mercedes Lackey
8d8e797 Look, I control a large part of this barrio because I control one thing, credit. That's right, it's that simple. Credit is the lifeline, the blood that turns the wheels. In Barelas I control it, but out there, well, out there are bigger animals, and they in turn control my credit. It doesn't matter how good a businessman I am, if they cut off my credit I am dead, the barrio's dead, nothing grows without the green blood of the dollar. Now, how long do you think it would take the banks to cut off my credit if I joined a group of communists like you? They'd do it like this! greed credit corruption Rudolfo Anaya
e1bdc7b A lord who does not distribute wealth is a lord who will lose the allegiance of his men, money responsibility greed politics leadership rulership facts Bernard Cornwell
1 ▲ ▼