Donald Miller Quotes

Some people, of course, can be happier with the cars, the fancy threads, the hilltop mansion, and the other status symbols of 'having made it', but I found that several of my most prized possessions were slipping away, despite all the fortune I had amassed.

We live in a material world. I'm not saying that beautiful things don't enhance our lives. But, in our culture, we're never happy.

In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating.

Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.

It seems like a lot of people seek their peace in things. And most of us are not even satisfied with the things we have... we always want more.

I've seen a lot of people in my life base their self-worth on what job they book or don't book, what car they drive, or whether they can afford a house deposit or not.

I believe that a lot of people in our society today, people who have been hurt and even people who haven't been hurt, get their worth and value from what they do, what they look like, what they own, what kind of job they have, what kind of house they live in, how much money they have, what social circles they're in, what level of education they have, especially even how other people respond to them. They feel better about themselves if everybody is giving a smiling nod to the way they look and all their choices.

The numbing lists of things you were supposed to have as an American to make you happy, which ultimately, of course, don't. Those aren't the things that make you happy.

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

The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself.

Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.

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

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

It's horrible when people are only interested in buying labels, because it doesn't bring them the happiness they think it will.

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.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

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

The way you dress or the car you drive or what you spend is to impress other people with how, I guess, successful and rich you are. But you're not, and you shouldn't, and who gives a damn what other people think anyway. So, that mentality, I think, is very destructive.

I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled - all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you - stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame.

We go on multiplying our conveniences only to multiply our cares. We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties.

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.

The vanity of loving fine clothes and new fashion, and placing value on ourselves by them is one of the most childish pieces of folly.

Materialism is an identity crisis.

Since I was, I've had that feeling of, 'Am I enough? Am I worthy? Am I supposed to be here?' And my culture and society is telling me that I'm actually not in a lot of ways - unless I have this amount of money, or I'm in this kind of car and I have this kind of job, or I'm famous, or whatever.

There is nothing wrong with having nice things, but when you are trying to buy nice things to be happy, you are going to hurt. It's not going to work.