“Acquisitiveness – the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods – is a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of fear with the desire for necessaries.”

— Bertrand Russell

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

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Bertrand Russell 562

logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Castle Series, Castle in the Air (1990), pp. 102-103.

“An original is a creation motivated by desire.
Any reproduction of an original is motivated by necessity.”

Man Ray (1890–1976) American artist and photographer

"Originals Graphics Multiples" (1973) 
Context: An original is a creation motivated by desire.
Any reproduction of an original is motivated by necessity.
The original is the result of an automatic process, the reproduction, of a mechanical process. In other words: Inspiration then information; each validates the other.
All other considerations are beyond the scope of these statements.
It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.

“The envious man desires some good which another possesses; the jealous man would often be content to be without the good so that that other did not possess it.”

Arthur Helps (1813–1875) British writer

Source: Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms. (1871), p.31.

“The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Patrologia Latina, vol. 37, p. 1922

“I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary.”

Nathan Hale (1755–1776) soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War

Statement to Captain William Hull prior to his spying mission, as quoted in "Captain Nathan Hale (1755 - 1776)" http://www.connecticutsar.org/patriots/hale_nathan.htm by Rev. Edward Everett Hale
Context: I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. If the exigencies of my country demand a peculiar service, its claim to perform that service are imperious.

“All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)

“Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

“The question about “good origins” becomes the crux for enlightenment. It becomes more and more clear that this idea of origin has not a temporal but a Utopian reference. The Good is still nowhere to be found, except in the wishful human spirit.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 56

“It was the verdict of ancient writers that men afflict themselves in evil and weary themselves in the good, and that the same effects result from both of these passions. For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it. From this arises the changes in their fortunes; for as men desire, some to have more, some in fear of losing their acquisition, there ensues enmity and war, from which results the ruin of that province and the elevation of another.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Ch. 37 Variant: Nature has so contrived that to men, though all things are objects of desire, not all things are attainable; so that desire always exceeds the power of attainment, with the result that men are ill-content with what they possess and their present state brings them little satisfaction. Hence arise the vicissitudes of their fortune. (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Discourses on Livy (1517)

“I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love.”

Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) playwright and writer

Source: To Be Young, Gifted and Black (1969), p. 100
Context: I wish to live because life has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Therefore, since I have known all of these things, I have found them to be reason enough and — I wish to live. Moreover, because this is so, I wish others to live for generations and generations and generations.

“Acquisitiveness – the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods – is a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of fear with the desire for necessaries.”

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Bertrand Russell 562

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