Lee Child Quotes

The more we have the less we own.

Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you, and in this materialistic age a great many of us are possessed by our possessions.

Spoiled. That's all it's about - can't live without this, can't live without that. You can live without anything you weren't born with, and you can make it through on even half of that.

I already own more than any human being needs.

How many BMWs do you need? How many Rolex watches you gonna wear in your lifetime, for crying out loud? What is it about that kind of desire? I don't understand it.

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

We heap up around us things that we do not need as the crow makes piles of glittering pebbles.

Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.

The more we take, the less we become.

The question becomes not just how to accumulate more, but how to covet less.

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

Advertising is an environmental striptease for a world of abundance.

I had the notion that, OK, so now we have all of this wealth, we could buy not only one expensive car, we could buy all of them. As soon as you realize that you could buy all of them, then none of them are particularly interesting or satisfying.

Our culture highlights the desire to always have more, even when we should be grateful for what we have.

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

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.

The corruption of the American soul is consumerism.

In New York, I live on a compost heap of all the stuff I accumulate.

I understand the human instinct to want to create a nest and possess things, to show them off, but for me personally, it became less and less interesting.

There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.

We've been raised to compete, to want more! More! More! It's a way of life. It's about greed.

I always want more.

People surround themselves in their houses with things they don't really need, that they have to dust all the time.

We have allowed ourselves to be defined by our consumption instead of by our ability to move beyond it.

And plenty makes us poor.