“Evil is the root of all money.”

“Evil is the root of all money.” Khaled Ansari’s expression turns a familiar moral saying inside out, making money not the source of wrongdoing but its product. Its force comes from the breadth of the claim: no money is entirely clean, because someone, somewhere, suffers in the process of earning it.

Reversing the Familiar Saying

Speaking with Lin in his apartment, Khaled rejects the idea that money is the root of evil and substitutes the opposite direction of cause and effect. The reversal shifts attention from money as an object to the actions and suffering that produce it. His claim is not limited to obviously criminal wealth: he insists that all money is dirty in some way.

Suffering and the Black Market

Khaled connects this judgment to the willingness of people who would otherwise never break the law to add an extra amount to their money through the black market. In his account, the attraction of the illicit transaction is part of the same moral economy as ordinary earning: both can conceal suffering behind the money received. The expression thus treats the black market not as an isolated exception but as a visible extension of a more general corruption.

The Speaker’s Position

The claim comes from Khaled, who manages Khader Khan’s black-market currency operation. When Lin points out that Khaled makes his living from it, Khaled answers with a curt question rather than denying the contradiction. That exchange leaves his maxim suspended between moral diagnosis and self-implication: he names the evil embedded in money while continuing to earn through one of its clearest examples.