Steven Levitt Quotes

Someone reminded me I once said, 'Greed is good.' Now it seems it's legal.

When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

Capitalism without Judaism, Christianity, or some other moral basis is just pure greed.

Corporations are not capable of doing things out of the goodness of their hearts. They don’t have hearts.

It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. What is true is that honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.

We will always put our values before our bottom line.

Under the rules of a society that cannot distinguish between profit and profiteering, between money defined as necessity and money defined as luxury, murder is occasionally obligatory and always permissible.

If you're the kind of kid who thinks that all that's important in life is making money, Wall Street is probably still the place to go, especially now that Trump's elected.

Your normal Wall Street big-swinging Richard has enough of a lingering moral compass to at least tell himself that his wizardry benefits somebody or something besides himself. You know, his cleverness makes capital markets more efficient. It provides credit to productive enterprise. Whatever.

There are a lot of ethical firms on Wall Street.

I met Michael Milken for the first time with Oliver Stone at the Drexel Burnham offices in Los Angeles.

I have always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an honorable manner. I have endeavored to remember that the object of life is to do good.

Everywhere you look, there's a hunger to put the ethos by which Wall Street thrives on trial.

I would ask: Given the nature of free-market capitalism - where the rule is to rise to the top at all costs - is it possible to have a financial industry hero? And by the way, this is not a pop-culture trend we're talking about. There aren't many financial heroes in literature, theater or cinema.

I don't know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

If your only arbiter of anything is money, really you should... go and rob banks.

It's a very enclosed world on Wall Street.

There is always greed. There is nothing wrong with greed.

Wall Street has desperate need of men like you.

The goose that lays the golden egg has been considered a most valuable possession. But even more profitable is the privilege of taking the golden eggs laid by somebody else's goose. The investment bankers and their associates now enjoy that privilege. They control the people through the people's own money.

We can continue to have a policy in which the public interest means whatever they [broadcasters and communications companies] want it to mean in order to make money. Or we can give it real meaning.

The more men value money the less they value virtue.

Greed has been severely underestimated and denigrated—unfairly so in my opinion. … there's nothing wrong with avarice as a motive as long as it doesn't lead to dishonest … conduct.

it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God