John Woolman Quotes

I don't really like money - I like the things you can buy with money.

The media is convincing people that if you have that 'next thing,' that diamond, the right car, then you'd be happier.

To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.

There's nothing wrong with having a desire to want nice things.

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.

I believe war is the inevitable fruit of our economic system.

A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

The conversation of most middle-class Americans, we are told, revolves around consumption: what to buy, what was just bought, where to eat, the price of the neighbor's house, what's on sale this week, our clothes or someone else's, the best car on the market this year, where to spend a vacation. Apparently we can't stop eating, shopping, or consuming. Success is measured not in terms of love, wisdom, and maturity but by the size of one's pile of possessions.

Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things

In sports teams, apart from talk of sporting prowess and the imparting of inspirational thought, an extraordinary amount of time is spent discussing, and flaunting, material possessions.

In our rich consumers' civilization we spin cocoons around ourselves and get possessed by our possessions.

There came into the world an unlimited abundance of everything people need. But people need everything except unlimited abundance.

As human beings, we're very materialistic and have all this stuff - furs and cars and diamonds and money.

Money gives me pleasure all the time.

It gets boring to me when people talk about clothing brands or what boat they're going to buy next summer.

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.

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

One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

Culture and possessions, there is the bourgeoisie for you.

I got a bit enamoured with bigger houses and things like that.

What I think is so amazing about having everything, and feeling like I have everything, is that I don't really find happiness within materialistic things. Like, it's cool if I can buy myself a new car, and I think it's amazing for a week, but then the thrill is over, and I'm like, 'Oh, so I guess that wasn't really happiness.'

I've never been that person who wants a Rolls Royce or wants to live in a mansion or what have you.

He is a great simpleton who imagines that the chief power of wealth is to supply wants. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it creates more wants than it supplies.

In peace and war it's always money.