Parker Palmer Quotes

You may have occasion to possess or use material things, but the secret of life lies in never missing them.

I'm someone who'd never base how happy I am on how much money I have, or how good a restaurant is because of how posh it is.

No, nothing has changed in my life at all, and nothing would change if I had millions.

What I think is so amazing about having everything, and feeling like I have everything, is that I don't really find happiness within materialistic things. Like, it's cool if I can buy myself a new car, and I think it's amazing for a week, but then the thrill is over, and I'm like, 'Oh, so I guess that wasn't really happiness.'

Material things aren't important to me.

We judge of entire nations by the productions of a few mechanical arts, and think we are talking of men, while we are boasting of their estates, their dress, and their palaces. The sense in which we apply the terms, great, and noble, high rank, and high life, show, that we have, on such occasions, transferred the idea of perfection from the character to the equipage; and that excellence itself is, in our esteem, a mere pageant, adorned at a great expense, by the labors of many workmen.

Fame and fortune and the interstate is great and fun, but it ain't life.

We are living in a material world and I'm a material girl.

Whoever dies with the most stuff wins.

I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me.

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

I am totally unattached to material items.

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.

In my experience, it is rarer to find a really happy person in a circle of millionaires than among vagabonds.

I see what happens when one gets very attached to material things. That's just not what my life is.

God didn't make me to make movies, flex muscles, buy gold. What you love the most becomes your God... If I never make another dollar, my life is complete.

At Thanksgiving, I always start at the top of my list and say I'm grateful for friends, family, and good health. Then I get more superficial... like being thankful for my Louboutins.

You don't find happiness by being able to buy everything you want, whenever you want it.

In fact, I'd just like to own something. Everyone thinks I'm glamorous, rich and famous but all I've got is some recording equipment and a battered old BMW.

I am not trying to say that I am poor and that I don't like beautiful things. But I don't like luxury for luxury sake or in the sense of showing off luxury.

Material things don't matter.

The happiest people, the ones you like the most, they're never worried about being rich.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

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.

I've never been that person who wants a Rolls Royce or wants to live in a mansion or what have you.