Rick Warren 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.

Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.

The amount of money that people spend on saving stuff, they try to feed you this idea that it's more important.

Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn to them?

Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.

She could see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy, no more important really than her spoiled desire for the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald. For, once she owned the earbobs, they had lost their value, as everything except money lost its value once it was hers.

Owning things is an obsession in our culture. If we own it, we feel we can control it; and if we control it, we feel it will give us more pleasure. The idea is an illusion.

Those who constantly want something will never feel happy.

The whole idea of the pursuit of goods and possessions has completely corrupted the human experience, along with religion, which I think limits the intellect.

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

Shopping seemed to take an entirely too important place in women's lives. You never saw men milling around in men's departments. They made quick work of it. I used to wonder if shopping was a form of escape for women who had no worthwhile interests.

Man needs so little... yet he begins wanting so much.

All things that a man owns hold him far more than he holds them.

The instinct of acquisitiveness has more perverts, I believe, than the instinct of sex. At any rate, people seem to me odder about money than about even their amours.

We must understand what our idea of wealth is. Is it just about more buildings, more machines, more cars, more of everything? More and more is death. In the most affluent societies in the world, for example in the United States of America, a significant percentage of the population is on anti-depressants on a regular basis. If you just withdraw one particular medication from the market, almost half the nation will go crazy. That is not wellbeing. Generally, an American citizen has everything that anyone would dream of.

The more you own, the more it owns you.

Owning is owing, having is hoarding.

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.

Certainly, possessions, money, and power can give a momentary thrill, the illusion of being happy, but they end up possessing us and making us always want to have more, never satisfied. ‘Put on Christ’ in your life, place your trust in him, and you will never be disappointed!

To fill a small bag means selecting,and choosing, and evaluating. There's no logicial end to that process. Pretty soon I would have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I'd be like the rest of you.

The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves . . . as suppliants admitted to a shrine.

The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.

I wish we didn't live in a world where buying and selling things seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.

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.

In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.