Dalai Lama Quotes

I know it sounds old-fashioned to say we're too materialistic in the West, but happiness does not derive exclusively from things, and yet we seem to be structuring our whole society around things. I think that's partially why Westerners are joining ISIS and going to Syria. We have lost our way in the West in holding up a vision for humanity that is not exclusively shaped by materialism.

That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.

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

Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. If you have everything the world can give - pleasure, possessions, power - but lack peace of mind, you can never be happy.

Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.

It doesn't matter how many pairs of shoes you have, how many cars you have, etc.... It's all utterly meaningless and yet we continue to pursue this. Why? Because they've learned they can stimulate our primal desires through selling us products.

And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

When one lives attached to money, pride or power, it is impossible to be truly happy.

The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere hitching post of every star, lets every man lead a very enticing double life.

Possessions only provide temporary happiness.

How easily we get trapped in that which is not essential - in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth - when simply being alive is the gift beyond measure.

If you're looking for happiness in things, you'll never find it.

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

Seeking happiness in material things is a sure way of being unhappy.

Do not be caught up in materialism, one of the real plagues of our generation-that is, acquiring things, fast-paced living, and securing career success.

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.

You may have occasion to possess or use material things, but the secret of life lies in never missing them.

We humans are more concerned with having than with being.

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

The world says: "You have needs - satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.

I'm gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender. Where the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender. And believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy, though true love could have been a contender.

High thinking is inconsistent with a complicated material life based on high speed and imposed on us by mammon worship.

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.

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.

We are living in a material world and I'm a material girl.