Tom Rath Quotes

Buy experiences, not things. Spending on experiences makes people happier than spending on things. Things get broken and go out of style. Experiences get better every time you talk about them.

I'm not an overly material person. Sure, I like certain comforts in life. But buying a lot of 'things' doesn't produce happiness for me.

Happiness will come from materialism, not from meaning.

I try to stress to my children that buying something never leads to true happiness.

We must understand what our idea of wealth is. Is it just about more buildings, more machines, more cars, more of everything? More and more is death. In the most affluent societies in the world, for example in the United States of America, a significant percentage of the population is on anti-depressants on a regular basis. If you just withdraw one particular medication from the market, almost half the nation will go crazy. That is not wellbeing. Generally, an American citizen has everything that anyone would dream of.

Watching too much TV can triple our hunger for more possessions, while reducing our personal contentment by about 5 percent for every hour a day we watch.

Nobody is happy alone. To share experiences is always a good thing.

Don't tell us about dreams – dream dinners aren't any good and we can't share them.

We've been sold a concept of joy through advertising. It was somehow sold to us through a Gucci bag or something.

Success is measured by the memories you create.

I see a future in which games once again are explicitly designed to improve quality of life, to prevent suffering, and to create real, widespread happiness.

The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury.

...thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness?

Our favorite teams bring people together, keep family members close, bond people from different generations. Some of the happiest moments of my life involve something that happened with one of my teams.

Life is better when you share it.

All should be taught that the highest ambition is to be happy, and to add to the well-being of others; that place and power are not necessary to success; that the desire to acquire great wealth is a kind of insanity. They should be taught that it is a waste of energy, a waste of thought, a waste of life, to acquire what you do not need and what you do not really use for the benefit of yourself or others.

There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.

The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.

Don’t accumulate possessions; accumulate experiences!

Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others-the minted round of metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's contentment.

Guys, just remember, if you get lucky, if you make a lot of money, if you get out and buy a lot of stuff--it's gonna break. You got your biggest, fanciest mansion in the world. It has air conditioning. It's got a pool. Just think of all the pumps that are going to go out. Or go to a yacht basin any place in the world. Nobody is smiling, and I'll tell you why. Something broke that morning. The generator's out; the microwave oven doesn't work . . . Things just don't mean happiness.

There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need," Morrie said. "You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don't need the latest sports car, you don't need the biggest house. The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction?...Offering others what you have to give...I don't mean money, Mitch. I mean your time. Your concern. Your storytelling. It's not so hard.

I don't dream football. I dream the American Dream - two cars in a garage, be a happy father.

How many times have you bought something thinking it would make you happy, and found it does not?

I guess money can't buy happiness if you shop in the wrong places.