Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

America is a very seductive place in terms of lifestyle and comfort, but it wasn't for me.

America's critics can be heard everywhere. It is too much in love with money - worshipping the god of the marketplace, the golden calf. It has too much money, seven of the top 10 banks, eight of the top 10 companies etc. It is too stingy, giving away less of its wealth than other countries. It is vulgar, a rich barbarian.

Our fathers worshiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he worships the gold of the calf.

I feel like this whole idea of wanting something that you don't really have is also very American in a way.

The more people have, the less content they seem to be. In America, the cultural expectation that we're to be happy all the time and our children are to be happy all the time is toxic, and I think that really gets in the way of emotional well-being.

Of course L.A. has its mad bits: you can get a collagen cappuccino if that's what you really want. But the American Dream is so ingrained in the American culture, and the place you go to find it is L.A.

It's one of the central problems of American culture: telling you if you're younger, more beautiful, more famous, whatever, that then you'll be happy.

If you live for this world, you are in the junk business. It's all just premature junk.

So many people spend their lives chasing money and end up as the richest men in the cemetery. I don't want to be like that.

They have succeeded in accumulating a greater mass of objects, but the joy in the world has grown less.

Even though in the world you are the most learned scholar of the time, Behold the vanishing of this world and this time!

Shopping and buying and getting and having comprise the Great American Addiction. No one is immune. When the underclass riots in this country they don't kill policemen and politicians, they steal merchandise. How embarrassing.

The "pursuit of happiness" is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.

The numbing lists of things you were supposed to have as an American to make you happy, which ultimately, of course, don't. Those aren't the things that make you happy.

O the world is but a word; were it all yours to give it in a breath, how quickly were it gone!

Hodie mihi cras tibi, said the inscription. Sic transit gloria mundi. My turn today, yours tomorrow. And thus passes away the glory of the world.

The world's thy ship and not thy home.

Flowers are one of the few things we buy, bring home, watch die, and we don't ask for our money back.

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man, Less than a span.

There is a strange and mighty race of people called the Americans who are rapidly becoming the coldest in the world because of this cruel, man-eating idol, lucre.

In my experience, the more people have, the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that depression is a 'disease of affluence', a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world.

Those who constantly want something will never feel happy.

If happiness could be bought, we'd probably be unhappy at the price tag. If only the secret of happiness was as simple as getting wealthy and spending more.