If the motivation was simple greed, then that was a promising target for development as an agent inside the enemy’s camp. Greed was not only a predictable impulse, but was an indicator of the dependability of the individual being suborned. It was overwhelmingly associated with profoundly self-centered egos and values.

The need for instant gratification is a component of greed.

On the surface, it may look like this is our true nature, because it is currently rampant throughout the world. But the reality is that greed is a conditioned habit that is easily mistaken for our true nature. The selfishness of greed is deeply rooted in the mind, but it is a pattern like any other — it can be observed and released. What was once widely understood as human nature — being greedy, fearful, and even hateful — is not our nature at all. These traits are human habits, conditioned behavior that was imprinted onto us by past generations and past experiences.

We’re not making a world without greed, Jacob. We’re making a world where greed is a perversion. Where grabbing everything for yourself instead of sharing is like smearing yourself with shit: gross. Wrong.
Our winning doesn’t mean you don’t get to be greedy. It means people will be ashamed for you, will pity you and want to distance themselves from you. You can be as greedy as you want, but no one will admire you for it.

Greed. What's more greedy than wanting to take something from someone else that you haven't earned.

For what is life but greed in action?

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.

At all times people had known greed: but at no time before this had greed outgrown a mere eagerness to acquire things and become an obsession that blurred the sight of everything else: an irresistible craving to get, to do, to contrive more and more - more today than yesterday, and more tomorrow than today: a demon riding on the necks of men and whipping their hearts forward toward goals that tauntingly glitter in the distance but dissolve into contemptible nothingness as soon as they are reached, always holding out the promise of new goals ahead - goals still more brilliant, more tempting as long as they lie on the horizon, and bound to wither into further nothingness as soon as they come within grasp: and that hunger, that insatiable hunger for ever new goals gnawing at man's soul: Nay, if you but knew it you would see the hell you are in.

But when we crave power over life — endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality — then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.

Greed is a sickness of the mind. The more one hoards, the more greed increases. Giving with no expectation eliminates greed.

Too often, achievement, accomplishment, ambition is defined as greed. Here’s my clarification: greed is attempting to get something for nothing, to take without exchange.

Where there is power, greed, and money there is corruption.

Nothing destroys one's respect in the hearts of others more than greed.

The victims of greed and exploitation will never get justice solely by relying upon the vision and generosity of those who hold power and seek their own gain. Power is blinding and corrupting and causes the slave-owner to imagine that it is his duty to perpetuate slavery. The victims of imperialism, in a world where national egotism and greed are rampant, must resort to coercive action if they are to secure freedom and justice.