Wealth Quotes · MoveMe Quotes

Fame, Fortune, and Ambition [Book]

By: Osho

From this Book: 26 Quotes

Book Overview: Fame, Fortune, and Ambition examines the symptoms and psychology of preoccupations with money and celebrity. Where does greed come from? Do values like competitiveness and ambition have a place in bringing innovation and positive change? Why do celebrities and the wealthy seem to have so much influence in the world? Is it true that money can’t buy happiness? These questions are tackled with a perspective that is thought-provoking, surprising–and particularly relevant to our troubled economic times.

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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:

“Is it true that money cannot buy happiness? Yes, it is true. Money cannot buy happiness—but it makes misery more comfortable. That’s why I am not against money—I am all for it. It is better to be comfortably miserable than uncomfortably miserable. I have lived in poverty and I have lived in richness, and believe me: Richness is far better than poverty. I want you to be rich in every possible way—material, psychological, spiritual. I want you to live the richest life that has ever been lived on the earth.” ~ Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“Have you ever seen a bird poor? Animals in the forest—nobody is poor, nobody is rich. In fact, you don’t even see fat birds and thin birds. All the crows are almost identical; you cannot even recognize which is which. Why? They enjoy; they don’t hoard.” ~ Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“Meditation cannot be purchased, love cannot be purchased, friendship cannot be purchased, gratitude cannot be purchased—but nobody is concerned with these things. Everything else, the whole world of things, can be purchased. So every child starts climbing the ladder of ambitions, and he knows if he has money, then everything is possible. The society breeds the idea of ambition, of being powerful, of being rich. It is an absolutely wrong society. It creates psychologically sick, insane people. And when they have reached the goal that the society and the educational system have given to them, they find themselves at a dead end. The road ends; there is nothing beyond.” ~ Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“Money is a loaded subject because man’s psychology is full of greed; otherwise, it is a simple means of exchanging things, a perfect means. There is nothing wrong in it, but the way we have worked it out, everything seems to be wrong. If you don’t have money, you are condemned; your whole life is a curse, and for your whole life, you are trying to get money by any means. If you have money, it does not change the basic thing: You still want more, and there is no end to wanting more. When finally, you have too much money—even though it is not enough, it is never enough, but it is more than anybody else has—then you start feeling guilty, because the means that you have used to accumulate the money are ugly, inhuman, violent.” ~ Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“[The] will to power is the greatest sickness man has suffered from. And all our educational systems, all our religions, all our cultures and societies are in absolute support of this sickness. One has to understand that this tremendous urge to power is arising from an emptiness within you. A man who is not power-oriented is fulfilled, contented, at ease, at home as he is. His very being is an immense gratitude to existence; nothing more is to be asked. Whatever has been given to you, you had never asked for. It is a sheer gift out of the abundance of existence.” ~ Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“Needs are small: yes, you need food, shelter, you need a few things. Everybody’s needs can be provided for; the world has enough to fulfill everybody’s needs—but desires… it is impossible. Desires cannot be fulfilled. And because people are fulfilling their desires, millions of people’s needs are not being fulfilled.” ~ Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“I grew up in a wealthy family. Money was never a problem. On the contrary, I grew up in a wealthy family where money was more often used to avoid problems than solve them. I was again fortunate, because this taught me at an early age that making money, by itself, was a lousy metric for myself. You could make plenty of money and be miserable, just as you could be broke and be pretty happy. Therefore, why use money as a means to measure my self-worth?” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

“Research shows that once one is able to provide for basic physical needs (food, shelter, and so on), the correlation between happiness and worldly success quickly approaches zero. So if you’re starving and living on the street in the middle of India, an extra ten thousand dollars a year would affect your happiness a lot. But if you’re sitting pretty in the middle class in a developed country, an extra ten thousand dollars per year won’t affect anything much—meaning that you’re killing yourself working overtime and weekends for basically nothing.” ~ Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

The Most Valuable Currency There Is:

“Even if we have a lot of money in the bank, we can die very easily from our suffering. So, investing in a friend, making a friend into a real friend, building a community of friends, is a much better source of security. We will have someone to lean on, to come to, during our difficult moments.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step

“Success for me has little to do with money or possessions or status. Rather, success is a simple equation: Happiness + Growth + Contribution = Success. That’s the only kind of success I know. Hence, I want to partake in work that makes me happy, work that encourages me to grow, work that helps me contribute beyond myself. Ultimately, I want to create more and consume less. Doing so requires real work.” ~ The Minimalists, Everything That Remains

“The best way to give yourself a raise is to spend less money. These days I know that every dollar I spend adds immense value to my life. There is a roof over my head at night, the books or the music I purchase add unspeakable value to my life, the few clothes I own keep me warm, the experiences I share with others at a movie or a concert add value to my life and theirs, and a meal from China Garden with my best friend becomes far more meaningful than a trip to the mall ever could.” ~ The Minimalists, Everything That Remains

“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

“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

“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

You mean… There’s more to life than making money and buying stuff?

“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

Don’t get it twisted.

“[My wife] likes to think of money as a big magnifying glass. If you are a good person before you had money… then money makes you an even better person. If you were a charitable person before you had money… then money makes you even more charitable. But if you were an asshole before you had money… well then, money makes you an even bigger asshole.” ~ Jesse Itzler, Living with a SEAL