50 Materialism Quotes to WAKE YOU UP From The Nightmare of More

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Excerpt: Consumer culture is so good at making us want more. Read our 50 materialism quotes to WAKE UP from that nightmare and learn to live better.

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Introduction: The relationship between happiness and desire

“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”

Naval Ravikant, Medium

How many contracts of unhappiness have you signed? And how lengthy are the terms for each? Is the contract of your desire going to take you a week to obtain? A month? 12 months? 48 months? 72 months? Or is the contract you signed more like a 30 year mortgage?

Are you really okay with being unhappy for that amount of time? …For any amount of time? And for what? A fancy car? A luxury watch? A playboy mansion? How much of your life are you willing to sacrifice for these things?

You see, the issue isn’t in the objects themselves. It’s not about the cars, watches, or mansions—it’s about the time spent in discontent. What you do with your money is your business. Who am I to judge you for how you spend it? It’s about the unhappiness that you’re agreeing to when you choose to desire something that you don’t have.

Because what is happiness but the absence of desire? It’s only when you are content with where you, with what you have, and with the people you’ve chosen to surround yourself with that you can truly surrender to the present moment.

And that’s precisely the problem with desire—it takes you out of the present moment and places you in your head into some fantasy future dream place.

And the bigger that gap is between where you are and where you fantasize yourself to be—the bigger the feeling of discontent. This is where the get-rich-quick schemes come in.

Who cares about the “how,” all that matters is the end result, right? Whatever makes the most money now is the “how”—that’s the mantra. But, the problem with that type of thinking is that it’s completely backwards—the “how” is what matters the most. Why? Because the “how” is where you’re going to spend all of your time!

So, the next time you decide to desire something, reframe the question and ask yourself—am I willing to sign a contract of unhappiness for this desired object? Or, even better, how can I work towards obtaining this desired object in a way that allows me to enjoy the process of the work?

Because that’s the loop hole in this whole conversation—If you love the work that you do, then there is no issue—there is no contract. You are enjoying how you’re spending your time.

So long as the desire for the object isn’t overwhelming the enjoyment and present-minded flow state that comes from doing the chosen work—then why fret? The work—the how—just has to be the primary and the desire needs to be secondary.

Either that, or, you could just drop your desires altogether. One changes how you’re moving towards the finish line and the other takes away the finish line altogether. Without desire there is no race—there is no end to pursue. You get to simply be. As always, think carefully and choose wisely.

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The List: 50 Materialism Quotes That Will WAKE YOU UP From The Never-Ending Dream of More

Below, you will find 50 of our favorite materialism quotes that will remind you that the state of feeling discontent, unhappy, and not satisfied is but a dream state—a nightmare at that. A nightmare that has been forced upon you by the thousands—millions—of ads (both direct and indirect) that have bombarded you for the entire duration of your life. Ads that tell you that what you have isn’t enough and that the solution to not having enough is to buy more.

But, those ads aren’t true. They’re merely ploys to encourage spending. And neither ploys nor extraneous purchases are going to make you happy. It’s time to wake up from that nightmare. It’s time to see the world around you for what it is and what it’s really trying to get you to do. And it’s time to open your eyes up to contentment, happiness, and fulfillment and it’s time to see how readily available they each already are. To set you off on the right path, and without further ado, I share with you our materialism quotes that will WAKE YOU UP. Good luck.

“Everyone is attempting to buy what no one can sell.”

The Minimalists, Everything That Remains

“Many people know what they want to have, but have no idea of who they want to be. Getting ‘things’ simply will not fulfill you. Only living and doing what you believe is ‘the right thing’ will give you that sense of inner strength that we all deserve.”

Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

“As long as you think more is better, you’ll never be satisfied.”

Richard Carlson, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

“There is a popular heresy abroad today which states that if a little is good, more is better.  Following this dictum creates a life which is never fulfilling.  Even while you are engaged in one rich experience you are looking about for another.  There is no contentment because future plans are always intruding on the present.”

Robert A. Johnson, She

“Mo’ money, mo’ problems, and also mo’ stuff, less freedom.”

Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 209)

“No one dogged by creditors is free. Living outside your means is not glamorous. Behind the appearances, it’s exhausting. It’s also dangerous. The person who is afraid to lose their stuff, who has their identity wrapped up in their things, gives their enemies an opening. They make themselves extra vulnerable to fate.”

Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 209)

“Consumer culture is very good at making us want more, more, more.  Underneath all the hype and marketing is the implication that more is always better.  I bought into this idea for years.  Make more money, visit more countries, have more experiences, be with more women.  But more is not always better.  In fact, the opposite is true.  We are actually often happier with less.  When we’re overloaded with opportunities and options, we suffer from what psychologists refer to as the paradox of choice.  Basically, the more options we’re given, the less satisfied we become with whatever we choose, because we’re aware of all the other options we’re potentially forfeiting.”

Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

“More does nothing for the one who feels less than, who cannot see the wealth that was given to them at birth, that they have accumulated in their relationships and experiences. Solving your problem of poverty is an achievable goal and can be fixed by earning and saving money. No one could seriously claim otherwise. The issue is when we think these activities can address spiritual poverty.“

Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 124)

“Our ultimate aim in seeking more wealth is a sense of satisfaction, of happiness.  But the very basis of seeking more is a feeling of not having enough, a feeling of discontentment.  That feeling of discontentment, of wanting more and more and more, doesn’t arise from the inherent desirability of the objects we are seeking but rather from our own mental state.”

Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness

“If you’re not happy, you’re forever in debt.”

Witt Lowry, Debt (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)

“You don’t really pay for things with money, you pay for them with time. In five years, I’ll have put enough away to buy that vacation house we want. Then I’ll slow down. That means the house will cost you five years – one-twelfth of your adult life. Translate the dollar value of the house, car, or anything else into time, and then see if it’s still worth it.”

Charles Spezzano, Author

“Eventually, happiness was just a speck on the horizon, way off in the distance.  The closer I got, the farther I had to go.  Turns out that I’d been running as fast as I could in the wrong direction.  Oops.  The stuff wasn’t doing its job; it wasn’t making me happy.  Depression set in when I no longer had time for a life outside of work, laboring eighty hours a week just to pay for the stuff that wasn’t making me happy.  I didn’t have time for anything I wanted to do: no time to write, no time to read, no time to relax, no time for my closest relationships.  I didn’t even have time to have a cup of coffee with a friend, to listen to his stories.  I realized that I didn’t control my time, and thus I didn’t control my own life.  It was a shocking realization.”

The Minimalists, Everything That Remains

“Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.”

Matthieu Ricard

“Today there are societies that are very developed materially, yet among them there are many people who are not very happy.  Just underneath the beautiful surface of affluence there is a kind of mental unrest, leading to frustration, unnecessary quarrels, reliance on drugs or alcohol, and in the worst case, suicide.  So there is no guarantee that wealth alone can give you the joy or fulfillment that you are seeking.”

Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness

“None of those material possessions do anything to make your life any better… I know a lot of people who have a lot of everything, and they’re absolutely the most miserable people in the world.  So it won’t do anything for you unless you’re a happy person and can have peace with yourself.”

Lenny Kravitz

“We search for happiness all our lives, through presidents on a bill, degrees framed on walls, shiny fast cars, beautiful naked bodies, little boxes with little rings, and white picket fences. Perhaps they do make you feel happy, for a little while. Then you feel empty again. Just like a bucket with a hole on the bottom being filled with water. You can fill it with as much water as you can but when the water stop running, and the splashes are gone, and stillness comes, it’s empty again. Genuine happiness isn’t a goal and you can’t find it through anything that is tangible. It’s a state of mind that keeps you in the present moment wherein you are happy and grateful for everything in your life no matter what you have, where you are, and who you are with. To acquire this mental state you have to learn how to live in solitude and learn how to love yourself. You have to learn how to let go of all that is tangible and embrace the abundance of love and beauty the world is offering around you. You will find that happiness has been within you all along.”

Satori, infinite satori

“We have seriously confounded luxury with necessity in our culture, and can no longer differentiate between what we want in order to maintain a particular lifestyle (with its social relationships and sensual pleasures) and what we actually need for physical survival.  We have confounded social identity with biological and spiritual being to the point of believing we will die if we lose our social standing, which is often based on the material wealth we have accumulated.  This accelerating spiral of desires becoming necessities is driving our suicidal rush to destroy the Earth we depend on for our actual physical survival.”

Robert Kull, Solitude

“Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disillusionments before you realize that truth. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they will also give you pain. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they cannot give you joy. Nothing can give you joy. Joy is uncaused and arises from within as the joy of Being.”

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (Page 187)

“The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make.”

Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

“Greed is an effort to stuff yourself with something —it may be sex, it may be food, it may be money, it may be power.  Greed is the fear of inner emptiness.  One is afraid of being empty, and one wants somehow to possess more and more things.  One wants to go on stuffing things inside so one can forget one’s emptiness.  But to forget one’s emptiness is to forget one’s real self.  To forget one’s emptiness is to forget the way to god.  To forget one’s emptiness is the most stupid act in the world that a man is capable of.”

Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“The flourishing life cannot be achieved until we moderate our desires and see how superficial and fleeting they are.”

Epictetus, The Art of Living

“Nobody is interested in the commodity. People buy feelings.”

Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 155)

“Always remember the ultimate truth: life is not about money, it’s about emotion.  The real goal is to have the lifestyle you want, not the things.  When you die, someone else gets those things anyway.  They’re not yours.  I have no illusions: as much as I cherish and enjoy ‘my’ resort in Fiji, I know I’m just the caretaker.  Someday someone else will own this property.”

Tony Robbins, Money: Master the Game

“Inner peace begins when we stop saying of things, ‘I have lost it’ and instead say, ‘It has been returned to where it came from.’  Why should it be any concern of yours who gives your things back to the world that gave them to you?  The important thing is to take great care with what you have while the world lets you have it.”

Epictetus, The Art of Living

“The best present is presence.  You see, the people I care about mean much more to me than a new pair of shoes or a shiny new gadget or even a certified pre-owned luxury car with a huge bow on top.  And yet, many of us attempt to give material items to make up for the time we don’t spend with the people we love.”

The Minimalists, Everything That Remains

“The less expensive stuff you have, the less there is to worry about.”

Ryan Holiday, Medium

“Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”

Admiral Richard E. Byrd

“People with much less enjoy great lives.”

John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 19)

“The drive for trading up, wanting the new and improved, may fuel humanity’s progress, but it also creates a lot of dissatisfaction and anxiety.”

John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Page 84)

“There is something within every human being that dislikes boundaries, that is longing to become boundless. Human nature is such that we always yearn to be something more than what we are right now. No matter how much we achieve, we still want to be something more. If we just looked at this closely, we would realize that this longing is not for more; this longing is for all. We are all seeking to become infinite. The only problem is that we are seeking it in installments.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 23)

“Desire always begets more desire.  And thus the American Dream is a misnomer, a broken shiny thing, like a new car without an engine.  There is blood on the flag, our blood, and in today’s world of achieving and earning and endlessly striving for more, the American Dream really just seems to imply that we are fat and in debt, discontented and empty, every man an island, leaving a void we attempt to fill with more stuff.”

The Minimalists, Everything That Remains

“When you realize that all your material achievements are of value only in comparison with those who don’t have them, this is joy that springs from another’s deprivation. Can you really call this joy? Isn’t it actually a kind of sickness? It is time everyone addressed this. If you were alone on this planet, what would you want for yourself? Ask yourself this question and see where it takes you.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 221)

“Our possessions possess us.  All the things I owned kept the back of my mind activated.  I used to sit around and feel weighted down by all the stuff in my life.  I’d worry about everything I had, thinking ‘I’ve got this much, so now I need more – I need to level it out: I have the TV, so I need the DVD player; I have the garage, so I need a nice car to fill it; I have this, so I need that.’  It’s a never-ending cycle, a cold war with yourself.”

Colin Wright, via Everything That Remains (Read Matt’s Blog on this quote)

“It was our belief that the love of possessions is a weakness to be overcome. Its appeal is to the material part, and if allowed its way, it will in time disturb one’s spiritual balance. Therefore, children must early learn the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving.”

Ohiyesa, American Indian

“When you focus not on what you want, but on what you have, you end up getting more of what you want anyway.”

Richard Carlson, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”

Socrates

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

Epictetus

“You don’t possess the stars; still you can enjoy them.  Or do you first have to possess them, and only then will you be able to enjoy them?  You don’t possess the birds in the sky, but you can enjoy them.  What you need is not more possessions.  What you need is more sensitiveness, more aesthetic sensibility, more musical ears, more artistic eyes.  What you need is a vision that transforms everything into something significant and meaningful.”

Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost.”

Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 207)

“Monks and priests take vows of poverty because it will mean fewer distractions, and more room (literally) for the spiritual pursuit to which they have committed. No one is saying we have to go that far, but the more we own, the more we oversee, the less room we have to move and, ironically, the less still we become. Start by walking around your house and filling up trash bags and boxes with everything you don’t use. Think of it as clearing more room for your mind and your body. Give yourself space. Give your mind a rest. Want to have less to be mad about? Less to covet or be triggered by? Give more away.”

Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 210)

“A man is really a mature man when he has come to this conclusion: ‘If death is happening to everybody else, then I cannot be an exception.’ Once this conclusion sinks deep into your heart, your life can never be the same again.  You cannot remain attached to life in the old way.  If it is going to be taken away, what is the point of being so possessive?  If it is going to disappear one day, why cling and suffer? If life is not going to remain forever, then why be in such misery, anguish, worry?”

Osho, The Art of Living and Dying

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