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Greed is the desire for more than you need

• Greed:  An inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs. Oxford Dictionary
• Greed: An intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food. Oxford Dictionary
• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed. Gandhi
• Greed: A selfish and excessive desire for more of something than is needed. Merriam Webster
• One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish our needs from our greeds.  Don Robinson
• Desire,  Gluttony,  Consumerism,  Materialism,  Avarice,  Selfishness,  Contentment,  Ambition

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Greed always wants more and is never satisfied

• Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough. Janwillem Van de Wetering
• Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.  Erich Fromm
• He who is greedy is always in want. Horace
• There is never enough in the world to satisfy the dissatisfied heart. Christina Feldman
• How much is enough? Just a little bit more. John D. Rockefeller
• All I want is more and more and more. Is that asking too much? Ashleigh Brilliant
• Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little. Epicurus
• Although they possess enough, and more than enough still they yearn for more.  Ovid
• There’s never enough of the stuff you can’t get enough of. Patrick H.T. Doyle
• For greed all nature is too little. Seneca
• The covetous man is always in want. Horace
• Greed will always leave you dissatisfied because you’ll never be able to get everything you desire. Greed never allows you to think you have enough; it always destroys you by making you strive ever harder for more. Rabbi Benjamin Blech

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Greed is a part of human nature …

• Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating. It means nothing. Ben Stein
• We’re all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy. Mignon McLaughlin

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… one of the darker aspects

• Greed has been with human beings forever. We have a number of things in our species that you would call ‘the dark side,’ and greed is one of them. If you don’t put certain structures in place or restrictions on those parts of our being that come from that dark place, then it gets out of control. Michael Moore

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Many religious and spiritual walks denounce greed as a great vice …

• The core of all the great spiritual teachings and teachers can be surmised in a few simple paragraphs. Choose to be easy-going, benign, forgiving, compassionate, and unconditionally loving towards all life in all its expressions. Avoid negativity and the desire for worldliness and its greed for pleasure and possessions.   Seek to understand rather than to condemn. Venerate the teachers of these basic principles and ignore all others. Apply these principles to one’s view of oneself as well as of others.  David R. Hawkins
• Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed. Bhagavat Gita
• The main source of our wealth is goodness. The affections and the generous qualities that God admires in a world full of greed.  Alfred A. Montapert
• Greed is an imperfection that defiles the mind; hate is an imperfection that defiles the mind; delusion is an imperfection that defiles the mind. Buddha
• There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed. Gautama Buddha
• All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. Edgar Allan Poe
• Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Bible, Luke 12:15
• Nirvana means to extinguish the burning fires of the Three Poisons: greed, anger, and ignorance. This can be accomplished by letting go of dissatisfaction. Shinjo Ito
• From the Zen view all beings are in the grip of the three poisons, greed, anger and delusion (ignorance). Brenda Shoshanna
• Do not follow vain desires; for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger. Tammy Faye Bakker
• Vice

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… even as one of the deadly sins

• The Bible and several other self-help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful… or fun for that matter. Dave Mustaine
• Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed. Reid Hoffman
• There are three all-powerful evils: lust, anger and greed. Tulsi Das
• Sin

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Greed, most argue, can extract a heavy price

• Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.  Erich Fromm
• Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence. Mason Cooley
• Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed. Thomas Harris
• The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure. B.C. Forbes
• In his love for the world, the greedy is like the silkworm: the more it wraps in its cocoon, the less it has of escaping from it, until it dies of grief. Imam Muhammad al-Baqir
• There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontentment. And there is no greater disaster than greed.  Lao Tzu
• Envy and desire and ambition drive a man out of the world. Torah, Avot 4:21
• The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea. Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• Greed lessens what is gathered. Arab proverb
• If you ask for too much, you lose even that which you have. Isaac Asimov

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Greed causes many ills in the world

• Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. P. J. O’Rourke
• The world is burning in the fire of desire, in greed, arrogance and excessive ego. Sri Guru Granth Sahib
• Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles. Harry S. Truman

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Greed, at times, can be ruthless and destructive …

• The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life. Rabindranath Tagore
• Greed is so destructive. It destroys everything. Eartha Kitt

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… especially to the planet

• I think when sustainability begins to drive business practices instead of greed, we’ll evolve as a species. Tom Kay
• If we go on using the Earth uncaringly and without replenishing it, then we are just greedy consumers. Satish Kumar
• We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet. Stephen Hawking
• If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed and if we are not willing to change, we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect. Jacques Yves Cousteau
• It has been written that the meek shall inherit the earth. What has not been written is that they shall inherit it after the greedy and the selfish have already polluted the air, fouled the water and poisoned the food chain. The actual moral of the parable is stand up for yourself, for our planet and for all who dwell here.   Prophet
• By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Henry David Thoreau

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Greed corrupts the soul

• The beast for me is greed. Whether you read Dante, Swift, or any of these guys, it always boils down to the same thing: the corruption of the soul. Ben Nicholson
• So the unwanting soul sees what’s hidden, and the ever-wanting soul sees only what it wants. Lao Tzu
• The lusts and greeds of the body scandalize the Soul; but it has to come to heel. Logan Pearsall Smith
• The love for material things grows like a fungus in the soul and destroys the loveliness of the human heart utterly. Caryll Houselander
• Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance. Charles Caleb Colton
• The soul

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Greed corrupts morality

• When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses. Shirley Chisholm
• When greed talks, morality walks
• Morality and ethics

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Greed is the often the parent of crime

• Stealing to eat ain’t criminal-stealing to be rich is. Andrew Vachss
• Fraud is the daughter of greed. Jonathan Gash
• Curst greed of gold, what crimes thy tyrant power has caused. Virgil

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Greed can lead to great unhappiness

• Furthermore, the more you have the more you want, and you are stuck in a state of “wanting- ness,” and there is no lasting satisfaction in this circular cycle. Being in a state of “wanting- ness” creates suffering. Bear in mind, having cravings or a desire for anything that belongs in the physical world is not a source of happiness; instead these cravings are a source of unhappiness. It is not the lack of something that is behind your unhappiness; instead your craving is the root cause behind your unhappiness. Sampo Kaasila
• The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there. Chanakya
• The greedy search for money or success will almost always lead men into unhappiness. Why? Because that kind of life makes them depend upon things outside themselves. Andre Maurois
• Oh, the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling. It’s the unraveling and it undoes all the joy that could be. Joni Mitchell
• Unhappiness,  Suffering

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Greed is a kind of fear

• Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear. Cyril Connolly
• Isn’t that what makes most people greedy? Fear?  For some people, their greed is a result of something that’s happened in childhood, something they were deprived of, something they didn’t get.  Because of this lack in their lives, they feel that they have to hold on to everything they possibly can.  Tom Walsh
• Fear

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Greed is a kind of slavery

• He begins to accumulate treasure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but morbid association, he continues to accumulate it as an end. He lives poor, to die rich; and is the mere jailer of his house, and the turnkey of his wealth. Impoverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest, than his brothers slave to liberate it from the mine. Charles Caleb Colton
• He does not possess wealth; it possesses him. Benjamin Franklin
• Slavery

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Greed is a kind of poverty

• A greedy person and a pauper are practically one and the same. Swiss proverb
• It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor. Seneca
• Poverty wants much; but avarice, everything. Publilius Syrus
• Avarice is always poor. Samuel Johnson
• Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as poverty of what it has not. Publilius Syrus
• Avarice is always poor, but poor by her own fault. Johnson
• A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice. Swift
• Poverty

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Greed is a kind of ingratitude

• Greediness of getting more deprives… the enjoyment of what it had got.  Thomas Sprat
• Greed’s worst point is its ingratitude. Seneca
• Ingratitude

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To many, greed has become something of a modern virtue …

• Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.  Gordon Gekko (The movie: Wall Street)
• Greed: A word commonly used by liberals, low achievers, anti-capitalists and society’s losers to denigrate, shame and discredit those who have acquired superior job skills and decision-making capabilities and who, through the application of those job skills, achieve success. Neal Boortz
• I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself. Ivan Boesky
• The point is that you can’t be too greedy. Donald Trump
• Virtue

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… some would argue, with damaging results

• 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. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat- dog world we lose part of our humanity. Jon Foreman

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For better or worse, greed drives much of the world today …

• It is not greed that drives the world, but envy. Warren Buffett
• From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization. Friedrich Engels
• Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist. Andrew Weil
• If it weren’t for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong. Jasper Forde

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… and some would say, is at the heart of capitalism …

• Capitalism is against the things that we say we believe in – democracy, freedom of choice, fairness. It’s not about any of those things now. It’s about protecting the wealthy and legalizing greed. Michael Moore
• Capitalism is an organized system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding around thinking we can be that way, too – if we just work hard enough, sell enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac. Michael Moore
• What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of system. Milton Friedman
• You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker. Malcolm X
• The corporation cannot be ethical, its only responsibility is to make a profit. Jim Hightower

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… and the consumerist culture we live in

• Consumer culture makes us constantly aware of what we do not have. Aaron Freeman
• Consumerism

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At the root of greed is the fact you can’t ever find lasting satisfaction in external things

• Paradoxically, what keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work: The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep buying, keep consuming. Eckhart Tolle
• The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment. Samuel Johnson

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… and you can’t ever get enough of what you don’t need

• You cannot get enough of what you don’t need, because what you don’t need can never satisfy you. Anthony Lambert
• You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy. Eric Hoffer

Wanting is something that “having” can never cure…

• Wanting is something “having” cannot cure. Joe Fortenberry

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Riches often make greed only more thirsty

• To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible. Marie von Ebner- Eschenbach
• Riches enlarge rather than satisfy appetites. Thomas Fuller
• Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; the same is true of fame. Arthur Schopenhauer
• Hunger for gold is made greater as more gold is acquired. Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
• Money does not sate avarice, but stimulates it. Publilius Syrus
• It is not the want, but rather abundance that creates avarice. Michel de Montaigne
• Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it… The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one. Benjamin Franklin
• It is one of the worst effects of prosperity to make a man a vortex instead of a fountain; so that, instead of throwing out, he learns only to draw in. Beecher

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Money tends to unmask us

• Money doesn’t change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that’s all. Henry Ford
• Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are whether it’s greedy or loving.  Dan Millman

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Transcend greed by acknowledging it, rather than denying it

• Accept the unacceptable: lust, greed, envy, hate, murder.  Feelings like these are just as much a part of you as anything else.  We may not be proud of it, but we can’t help it, and it doesn’t help to pretend it isn’t there.  We’re social animals, and feelings about our status in the tribe, our access to the best mates to pass down our genes, are hard- wired into us.  We want to control how we act on these feelings, but we don’t have to pretend they don’t exist.  Richard O’Connor
• Acknowledgement

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Transcend greed by becoming content with what you have

• Desires, in contrast, can never be satisfied. Once we get what we crave, we soon find it less satisfying than we expected, so we strive for something else. The only escape from this perpetual wheel of want is to discover the contentment and perfection we already have. Gillian Stokes
• He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have. Socrates
• We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have. Frederick Keonig
• Happiness can only be achieved by looking inward and learning to enjoy whatever life has and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.  John Chrysostom
• Contentment

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Transcend greed through sharing and service

• We are rich only through what we give. Anne-Sophie Swetchine
• Any success you have is despite your lack of giving, not because of it. Richard Carlson
• The more our hearts and minds are turned to assisting others less fortunate than we, the more we will avoid the spiritually cankering effects that result from greed, selfishness and overindulgence. Joe J. Christensen
• If you think of life as like a big pie, you can try to hold the whole pie and kill yourself trying to keep it, or you can slice it up and give some to the people around you, and you still have plenty left for yourself. Jay Leno
• Those who have much are often greedy, those who have little always share. Oscar Wilde
• Service,  Giving

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Transcend greed by reducing your desires

• Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. Lao Tzu
• Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.  Aristotle
• By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich. Democritus
• Contentment is a pearl of great price, and whoever procures it at the expense of ten thousand desires makes a wise and a happy purchase. Balguy
• I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them. John Stuart Mill
• If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires. Epicurus
• The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires. Seneca
• Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. Epictetus
• Desire

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Transcend greed by discovering your true nature

• The attempt to satisfy greed is like drinking salty water when thirsty. When lost in greed we look outward rather than inward for satisfaction, yet we never find enough to fill the emptiness we wish to escape.  The real hunger we feel is for knowledge of our true nature. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
• Awaken to who you really are

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Transcend greed by dropping illusion

• You’ve got to drop illusions. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It’s only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Anthony de Mello
• Illusion

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Transcend greed by realising there are other forms of wealth than just money and possessions

• There is no wealth but life. John Ruskin
• True wealth

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Transcend greed by realising we can only enjoy what we use, no more

• All the good things of this world are no further good to us than as they are of use; and whatever we may heap up to give to others, we enjoy only as much as we can use, and no more. De Foe
• Enjoyment

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Leadership shouldn’t be seen as an opportunity to satisfy greed

• Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed. Mwai Kibaki
• Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread. Jennifer Donnelly
• Leadership

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Understanding greed and fear can make you into a great investor

• I will tell you the secret of getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful, and you try to be very fearful when others are greedy.  Warren Buffett
• For forty years I’ve seen the manic-depressive cycle of investor psychology swing crazily: between fear and greed – we all know the refrain – but also between optimism and pessimism, and between credulity and skepticism. In general, following the beliefs of the herd – and swinging with the pendulum – will give you average performance in the long run and can get you killed at the extremes. Howard Marks
• Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble… to give way to hope, fear and greed. Benjamin Graham
• The fact that people will be full of greed, fear or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable. Warren Buffet
• Investing

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Greed isn’t everywhere

• Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. Garrison Keillor
• The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines. Charles Kuralt
• There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority. Charles Kuralt

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• I want it all – and I want it delivered.
• The only gift I have to give, is the ability to receive. If giving is a gift, and it surely is, then my gift to you is to allow you to give to me. Jarod Kintz
• All I want is more and more and more. Is that asking too much? Ashleigh Brilliant
• I think greed is a terrible thing unless you are in on the ground floor.   …Yogi’ Berra
• Tariff: A scale of taxes on imports designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.  Ambrose Bierce
• The Bible and several other self-help or enlightenment books cite the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth, and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that we do, that is sinful… or fun for that matter. Dave Mustaine

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