“I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement in the U.S. that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.” – Christopher HitchensMost collections of greed quotes are soundly against the concept of greed. Why, then, are we presenting quotes in favor of one of the seven deadly sins? It’s not because we get off on controversy.
Greed, whether you like it or not, is one of our inextricable impulses which makes us all human. Whether we would become better or worse off without greed is moot. You could no sooner rid people of greed than you could rid them of vertebrae or blood cells.
Quashing greed outright would necessitate the creation of some very powerful authority – one which would be all too happy to quash other impulses which it deems disadvantageous to society (or more likely itself). Perhaps this authority could seek to undo the damage caused by greed by heavily taxing wealth. Of course, once you create an authority that has the power to seize others’ property, you can be very certain the greediest people on the planet will force themselves to run it. Greed is like gravity.
By all means, be as selfless as you like. Donate the electronic device you’re currently staring at to charity, and devote your life to helping the needy. But do not place fetters on people who are driven to become rich. While they may create harm, they also innovate, employ, and create things which we would all become poorer without.
Humanity hasn’t clung to this ball of astral soot for tens of thousands of years because our drives are somehow out of synch with our surroundings. The concept of “gimme that” runs deep, and it serves an indispensable purpose. “Greed,” as the man once said, “is good.”
Best Greed Quotes“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”
– Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.”
– Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”
– Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
“To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love – because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed value. The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone”
– Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
“No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as ‘the right to enslave.’”
– Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
“An Individualist is a man who lives for his own sake and by his own mind; he neither sacrifices himself to others nor sacrifices others to himself; he deals with men as a trader – not as a looter; as a producer – not as a Attila.”
– Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
“[T]he doctrine of ‘social responsibility’ involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scarce resources to alternative uses.”
– Milton Friedman, A Friedman doctrine – The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits
“[In a free society] there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception fraud.”
– Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
“You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.”
– Winston Churchill
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
– Milton Friedman
“Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”
– Calvin Coolidge
“There is nothing inherently fair about equalizing incomes. If the government penalizes you for working harder than somebody else, that is unfair. If you save your money but retire with the same pension as a free-spending neighbor, that is also unfair.”
– Arthur Brooks
“If you think spreading money around by force seems like an odd definition of fairness, you’re not alone.”
– Arthur Brooks
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
– Thomas Sowell
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect”
– George Sand, Indiana
“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that 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.”
– Stanley Weiser & Oliver Stone, Wall Street (Okay, we know this one was written as a criticism of greed, but we’re pretty sure Oliver Stone cashes all his checks.)
“There is nothing quite as wonderful as money!
There is nothing like a newly minted pound!
Everyone must hanker for the butchness of a banker
It’s accountancy that makes the world go round!”
– Eric Idle, Money Song
“Stop wasting my time. / You know what I want. / You know what I need. / Or maybe you don’t. / Do I have to come right flat out and tell you everything? / Gimme some money! Gimme some money!”
– Christopher Guest et al., This Is Spinal Tap
“Listen! We’re not just doing this for the money! We’re doing this for a S***LOAD of money!”
– Mel Brooks et al., Spaceballs
“I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”
– Thomas Sowell
Greed Quotes That Will Leave You Wanting More originally appeared on Thought Grenades, the blog on Libertas Bella.
