John Steinbeck Quotes

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

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.

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.

I don't like to attach myself to material things.

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.

The older I get, the less I obsess about material stuff. In fact, stuff has become the enemy. There always seems to be more of it than I have storage in my house!

We are not the sum of our possessions.

Sometimes it's better to look at things than own them... owning means anxiety and lots of bags to carry around.

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

After I had money, I realized about all that all the things I thought I wanted that I don't need a lot of stuff. If there's anything I get excited by, it's a nice car.

I've never been somebody who needs their car or other material, larger possessions to say something flashy about them.

I've never felt the need to show that I am either clever or tall because I'm not.

You spend a good part of your adult life acquiring things: building a home, filling it with objects that please your eye and make you feel comfortable. Then you spend the last part of your life trying to figure out how to get rid of it all.

I used to think that having many material things would increase one's stock of happiness. I found that to be completely untrue. The trappings don't make the man at all.

As our net worth falls, so does our self-worth. Ironically, it's when we don't have it that we most feel we have to flaunt it.

I'm not a minimalist, as I'm sure you've noticed.

The stretch of the limousine usually is inversely proportional to the self esteem of the person riding in it.

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.

You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.

We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It's written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn't, and if only this and only that, it would be beautiful again.

The things you used to own, now they own you.

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

I grew up with nothing, so whenever I got to where I could have something I felt like I needed to have everything I couldn't have when I was young.

I definitely don't think that I'm hot doo-doo. I don't.