Alan Lightman Quotes

Being pretty successful, I can, of course, afford some luxuries. But I realize again and again how we have to disillusion ourselves of the idea that these things are going to give us real satisfaction.

In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, 'why don't I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,' and they abandon their values.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

You always hear the phrase, money doesn't buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it's not really true. I got a new car because the old one's lease expired.

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

Money may not buy happiness, but it can damn well give it!

Happiness needs one-upmanship.

Humans metabolize their purchases very quickly, even if it seemed worth it for any number of reasons when you first bought it. After some time passes, people will go back to feeling the baseline feelings they had previously felt about themselves, no matter how shiny the object, the hair, or the experience.

The more we consume, acquire, and elevate our status, the harder it is to stay happy.

I look at what I have not and think myself unhappy; others look at what I have and think me happy.

You want the people to know, but you don't really want the things behind it. I have everything I ever wanted. I never wanted a big house. I never wanted a Ferrari. I mean, as I proceeded with the music, I started liking Ferraris...

People who are rich want to be richer, but what's the difference? The toys get different, that's all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It's all relative.

Some people, of course, can be happier with the cars, the fancy threads, the hilltop mansion, and the other status symbols of 'having made it', but I found that several of my most prized possessions were slipping away, despite all the fortune I had amassed.

Poor is the man who desires a lot

Our economy is based upon people wanting more; their happiness on wanting less.

I used to think that having many material things would increase one's stock of happiness. I found that to be completely untrue. The trappings don't make the man at all.

Possessions only provide temporary happiness.

That all who are happy are equally happy is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. A small drinking glass and a large one may be equally full, but the large one holds more than the small.

Material possessions, in themselves, are good. We would not survive for long without money, clothing and shelter. We must eat in order to stay alive. Yet if we are greedy, if we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, then we make our possessions into a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! But this is to make possessions into a false god. Instead of bringing life, they bring death.

Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body

The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself.

It’s hard, in America, not to equate ‘happiness’ with ‘things’.

The difference between us and other people is that their money looks bigger and their troubles smaller.

The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got.

There is little consolation in the fact that millions of people are unhappier than we are. Why should other people's misery make us happier or more content?