Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

As I sat down, though, I realized that you can get used to certain luxuries that you start to think they're necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don't need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things--though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart--and at the ranch, I could see, we have pretty much everything we'd need but precious little else.

I'm not materialistic. I love clothes and all that stuff, but I don't need it to live.

Poor is the man who desires a lot

He who has enough for his wants should desire nothing more.

The more wants a man has, the less freedom.

Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer things a Man wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supply'd.

The desires of man increase with his acquisitions.

If you can't eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don't bring it.

In the '80s, the world I was living in wasn't this world of consumption. There wasn't that much to buy, really. Actually I'm still struck by that. There's not an awful lot of stuff I want. Somebody quotes Diogenes, who's walking around saying, "How many things there are in the marketplace of which Diogenes has no need." I always feel that. Except of course when you're living in Venice, California and you see all these lovely houses!

He is not poore that hath little, but he that desireth much.

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

I don't think people today need to derive security from possessions.

Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?

A simple man will have only what he needs, and he will know the difference between what he needs and what he wants. We feel that whatever we want, we desperately need. But before we possess the world, to our wide surprise we see that the world has already possessed us.

Often when looking at a mass of things for sale, he would say to himself, 'How many things I have no need of!'

Before buying anything, it is well to ask if one could do without it.

We only need so much to survive, but this world we live in tells us we need more stuff to be happy. We're inundated with our televisions, the Internet and advertising that says in order to be happy you have to have these things. When you say, 'Gimme, gimme, gimme,' you will always be in short supply.

Most of the things we buy are wants. And we call them needs, but they're wants.

Once a person has all the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment.

I'm not a great consumer. I always ask myself, 'Do I really need that piece?' I have friends who have 300 pairs of shoes; how would you leave the house in the morning?

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

The secret to having everything you want out of life is the realization that you really don't want most of the things you think you want.

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

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.

I already own more than any human being needs.