Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Caleb Colton

To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be.

Charles Caleb Colton

The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.

Charles Caleb Colton

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.

Charles Caleb Colton

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Envy is the religion of the mediocre

Edward Gibbon

Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.

Elizabeth Montagu

it is more to my personal happiness and advantage to indulge the love and admiration of excellence, than to cherish a secret envy of it.

Edmund Waller

Poets may boast (as safely-vain) Their work shall with the world remain: Both bound together, live, or die, The verses and the prophecy. But who can hope his lines shou'd long Last, in a daily changing tongue? While they are new, envy prevails, And as that dies, our language fails.

Bertrand Russell

A life which goes excessively against natural impulse is... likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and uncharitableness.

Charles Caleb Colton

Avarice has ruined more souls than extravagance.

Eartha Kitt

Greed is so destructive. It destroys everything.

Stan Hyman

We accomplished what we wanted to come down here with the split, but when you sweep the first day you get a little greedy and want to get at least one of the two (contests) the next day.

Agnes de Mille

Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.

Aaron Swartz

Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Charles Horton Cooley

It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach.

Michael Shermer

I say you don't need religion, or political ideology, to understand human nature. Science reveals that human nature is greedy and selfish, altruistic and helpful.

Craig Davis

What this is about, this is isn't about pro sports, this is about greed. This is about money, power and arrogance.

Arianna Huffington

having too much is never enough.

Adam Smith

Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.

Albert Camus

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

Dick Spring

We are looking for a Wealth Tax that will bring in sufficient revenue to justify having a wealth tax.

Calvin Trillin

The ceiling on taxation of capital gains reflects the national belief that speculation is a more worthwhile way to make a living than work.

James Madison

The most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome.

Frank Chodorov

The institution of taxation rests foursquare on the axiom that somebody must rule somebody else.

Frank Chodorov

Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped.

Lyndon B. Johnson

In 1790, the nation which had fought a revolution against taxation without representation discovered that some of its citizens weren't much happier about taxation with representation.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He who has the base necessities of life should pay nothing; taxation on him who has a surplus may, if need be; extend to everything beyond necessities.