54 Materialism Quotes Expressing Less is More

Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people that they don't like.
- Will Rogers

Greed blinds us from recognizing the true value of what we already possess.
- Paulo Coelho

The folly of endless consumerism sends us on a wild goose-chase for happiness through materialism.
- Bryant H. McGill

Buying things gives us a false sense of control. True power is realizing you don’t need much.
- Maxime Lagacé

You must remember to love people and use things, rather than to love things and use people.
- Joshua Fields Millburn

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.
- Erich Fromm

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.
- Peace Pilgrim

It’s been said a million times that the most important things aren’t things. But if we’re not careful, it seems, many of us find ourselves overwhelmed by all the stuff we have to manage, instead of focused on what we’re most passionate about—writing or making or painting or connecting with people.
- Shauna Niequist

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
- Bertrand Russell

The world says: 'You have needs - satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more.' This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

There is no such thing as material covetousness. All covetousness is spiritual. ...Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.
- Mark Twain

Our own relentless search for novelty and social status locks us into an iron cage of consumerism.
- Tim Jackson

Nothing out there will ever satisfy you except temporarily and superficially, but you may need to experience many disillusionments before you realize that truth. Things and conditions can give you pleasure, but they will also give you pain.
- Eckhart Tolle

By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now, consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.
- Ellen Willis

We are the slaves of objects around us, and appear little or important according as these contract or give us room to expand.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Owning less is far more beneficial than organizing more.
- Joshua Becker

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Seneca

The more you desperately want to be rich, the more poor and unworthy you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make.
- Mark Manson

The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.
- Socrates

The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are.
- Mother Teresa

There is no guarantee that wealth alone can give you the joy or fulfilment that you seek.
- Dalai Lama XIV

Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.
- Chuck Palahniuk

Seek not the good in external things;seek it in yourselves.
- Epictetus

The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.
- Reinhold Messner

After a visit to the beach, it's hard to believe that we live in a material world.
- Pam Shaw

When you lose your desire for things that do not matter, you will be free.
- Morihei Ueshiba

It's so easy today to get swept up in celebrity fixation and materialism and searching for some validation outside of yourself when we know it's really found within and through meaningful connections with other people.
- Geoffrey S. Fletcher

Spend more time cultivating a mind that is not attached to material things than time spent accumulating them.
- Cory Muscara.

I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.
- John Muir

Inner peace begins when we stop saying of things, ‘I have lost it’ and instead say, ‘It has been returned to where it came from.’
- Epictetus

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.
- Socrates

Contentment makes poor men rich, Discontent makes rich men poor.
- Benjamin Franklin

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.
- Epicurus

When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, 'Oh yes – I already have everything that I really need.
- Dalai Lama XIV

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
- Epictetus

Almost nothing material is needed for a happy life, for he who has understood existence.
- Marcus Aurelius

Happiness does not come from consumption of things.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.
- Democritus

To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

The wealthiest have health, time and inner peace. They know the rest is optional.
- Maxime Lagacé

Individually, people are finding that a simpler lifestyle provides greater satisfaction than relentless pursuit of materialism.
- Laurance Rockefeller

People who live below their expectations, enjoy a freedom people who are busy upgrading their lifestyles can’t afford.
- Naval Ravikant

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
- John Lennon

When we think about the trends that millennials are taking toward simplicity, I think it's indicative of a cultural shift toward less of the 'more is more' for materialism sake and more of an emphasis on efficiency, value, and sustainability.
- Bobby Berk

He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.
- Benjamin Franklin

We cannot buy a meaningful life. We can only live it.
- The Minimalists.

Wisdom is knowing eternal satisfaction is impossible.
- Maxime Lagacé

Every human being lives in a perpetual state of insufficiency.
- Sadhguru

People with much less enjoy great lives.
- John Leland

Materialism is the only form of distraction from true bliss.
- Doug Horton

Greed is the disease of discontentment.
- Miguel Ruiz

More freedom is more empowering than more stuff.
- Joshua Fields Millburn

The best things in life aren’t things.
- Art Buchwald