Thomas Aquinas — "The root of all evil is avarice."
The root of all evil is avarice.
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"Concupiscence is a disorder of the appetite."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Avarice means greed — an insatiable desire to accumulate wealth or possessions beyond any reasonable need. This quote argues that greed is the foundational engine behind most human wrongdoing: people lie, steal, exploit, and destroy not purely from hatred or impulse, but from wanting more. Unchecked desire for material gain warps judgment, corrodes relationships, and drives individuals and institutions alike toward harmful ends.
Relevance to Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas (1225–1274) was a Dominican friar who personally took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience — making greed antithetical to his entire way of life. In his Summa Theologica, he catalogued avarice as a capital vice that breeds further sins. He argued virtue, not wealth, leads to human flourishing, and that greed fatally redirects the soul's orientation from God toward purely earthly, transient goods, corrupting reason itself.
The era
Aquinas lived during a 13th-century commercial revolution: merchant classes were rising, early banking and credit were expanding, and Crusades had opened new wealth flows into Europe. Simony — buying Church offices — was rampant, and feudal lords extracted crushing rents from peasants. The traditional spiritual order was visibly buckling under economic pressure. His warning about avarice was both theological doctrine and urgent social commentary on his own destabilizing era.
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