Peaceful World
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
Impossible
To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.
Everything
The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything.
Hung Up
A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.
Live Freely
It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Tolerable Planet
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Normal
Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
Superhero
The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff.
New Weariness
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
The Sinner
The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.
Intellectual Wealth
Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants' quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.
Limiting Principle
An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.
Quaintly Free
To have so little, and it of so little value, was to be quaintly free.
On A Level
I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.
Experiences
We all need new ideas, images, and experiences far more than we need new stoves or cars or computers.
Entrenched
We are being called upon to act against a prevailing culture, to undermine our own entrenched tendency to accumulate and to consume, and to refuse to define our individuality by our presumed ability to do whatever we want.
Happiness
The way of the consumerist culture is to spend so much energy chasing happiness that it has none left to be happy.
Working Jobs
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
Spending Billions
Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.
Principle Of Having
The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.
Enemies
Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom.
Better World
If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.