“Beware! Turn around and face your real enemies
— ambition, violence, hatred and greed.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Jim Harrison on Greed
They don’t know what happened to the hundred civilizations represented by the American Indian. That’s shocking. I’m dealing with that in this book. To me, the Indians are our curse on the house of Atreus. They’re our doom. The way we killed them is also what’s killing us now. Greed. Greed. It’s totally an Old Testament notion but absolutely true. Greed is killing the soul-life of the nation. You can see it all around you. It’s destroying what’s left of our physical beauty, it’s polluting the country, it’s making us more Germanic and warlike and stupid.
~ Jim Harrison / Paris Review
William Shakespeare on Greed
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
~ William Shakespeare / Henry IV.
Epictetus on Desires
“To (children) who put their hand into a narrow necked earthen vessel and bring out figs and nuts, this happens; if they fill the hand, they cannot take it out, and then they cry. Drop a few of them and you will draw things out. And do you part with your desires: do not desire many things and you will have what you want. ”
Epictetus, Discourses