You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?
— Steven Wright
To have plenty is to be perplexed.
— Tao Te Ching 22 (Chan)
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
— Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973), Ch. 3
Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave.
— Vonnegut, Player Piano
Every need got an ego to feed.
— Bob Marley
And whoso is saved from his own greed, such are the successful.
— Qur’án 64:16 (Pickthall)
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
— Thoreau, Walden, chp. 2
There is no greater sin than desire,
No creater curse than discontent,
No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself.
Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.— Tao Te Ching 46 (Feng/English)