Liputan6.com, Jakarta - Money and material things can control people's actions in powerful ways. Many individuals want more than they need, even when they already have enough. Greed makes people focus only on getting wealth and possessions while ignoring other important parts of life. Many greed quotes explore these feelings and how they affect relationships, happiness, and personal values.
The desire for more creates problems in families, friendships, and workplaces around the world. People sometimes choose money over trust, kindness, and honest connections with others. Greed quotes help us understand these difficult human emotions and behaviors. Learning about greed can help people recognize when they put material things before meaningful relationships.
In this article, we have selected some meaningful greed quotes from various sources, Tuesday (14/4/2026). These powerful words remind us of how greed affects our daily choices and long-term happiness.
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Meaningful Quotes About Greed That Will Make You Think
1. "The evil in our desires typically does not lie in what we want, but that we want it too much." - John Calvin
2. “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.” - Mahatma Gandhi
3. "Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed." - Albert Einstein
4. "The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less." - Annie Dillard
5. "Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence." - Mason Cooley
6. "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
7. "The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions, and evils, is rooted in the three poisons. Greed, anger, and delusion." - Bodhidharma
8. "Greed is the lack of confidence of one's own ability to create." - Vanna Bonta
9. "For greed all nature is too little." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
10. "The hypocrisy of some is that we like to think of ourselves as sophisticated and evolved, but we're still also driven by primal urges like greed and power." - Michael Leunig
11. "In our daily life, we encounter people who are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together." - Margaret J. Wheatley
12. "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
13. "Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist." - Andrew Weil
14. "Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer." - Julian Casablancas
15. "Fear, greed and hope have destroyed more portfolio value than any recession or depression we have ever been through." - James O'Shaughnessy
16. "The greedy man is incontent with a whole world set before him." - Saadi
17. "Selfishness and greed, individual or national, cause most of our troubles." - Harry S. Truman
18. "Poverty wants much; but avarice, everything." -Publilius Syrus
19. "Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough." - Janwillem van de Wetering
20. "There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it." - Maya Angelou
21. "Greed is permanent slavery" - Ali ibn Abi Talib
22. "There is no calamity greater than lavish desires. There is no greater guilt than discontent. And there is no greater disaster than greed." - Laozi
23. "Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance." - Charles Caleb Colton
24. "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
25. "Greed's worst point is its ingratitude." - Seneca the Younger
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Inspirational Greed Quotes to Remind You the Bad Side of Greed
1. "Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction." - Erich Fromm
2. "Greed is so destructive. It destroys everything." - Eartha Kitt
3. “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” - Socrates
4. "It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor." - Seneca the Younger
5. "Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed." - Thomas Harris
6. "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
7. "Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with 'what can I give' spirit." - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
8. "Do not follow vain desires; for verily he who prospers is preserved from lust, greed and anger." - Abu Bakr
9. "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
10. "We risk all in being too greedy." - Jean de La Fontaine
11. "If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it." - John D. Rockefeller
12. "You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you should not be satisfied if it were doubled." - Charles Spurgeon
13. "It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly." - Bertrand Russell
14. "Kindness trumps greed: it asks for sharing. Kindness trumps fear: it calls forth gratefulness and love. Kindness trumps even stupidity, for with sharing and love, one learns." - Marc Estrin
15. "It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have all one wants." - Blaise Pascal
Deep Gratitude Quotes to Remind You to Be Thankful
1. "The thankful heart opens our eyes to a multitude of blessings that continually surround us" - James E. Faust
2. "Joy is the simplest form of gratitude." - Karl Barth
3. "Gratitude is the single most important ingredient to living a successful and fulfilled life." - Jack Canfield
4. "God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say 'thank you?'" - William Arthur Ward
5. "The struggle ends when gratitude begins." - Neale Donald Walsch
6. "We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count." - Neal A. Maxwell
7. "Gratitude is an opener of locked-up blessings." - Marianne Williamson
8. "Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” - William Arthur Ward
9. "Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance." - Eckhart Tolle
10. "Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace & gratitude." - Denis Waitley
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