It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

Sooner or later we get just what we expect.

The Stoic Sage, or wise man, needs nothing but uses everything well; the fool believes himself to “need” countless things, but he uses them all badly.

Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things.

If your motivation for acquiring money or success comes from a non-supportive root such as fear, anger, or the need to ‘prove’ yourself, your money will never bring you happiness.

Materialism takes root in early childhood, and is driven mainly by low self-esteem.

The results from both studies clearly indicated that in terms of short- and long-term happiness, buying experiences made people feel better than buying products.

Many people in Western culture are striving for success. They want the home, they want the great business. They want all of these outer things. But what we found in our research is that having those things, certainly doesn't guarantee what we really want, which is happiness. And that's when all those outer things come. They don't come from going after them first to get the happiness, it's backwards; you go for the sense of inner joy, of inner peace, of inner vision first and then all of the other things from the outside appear.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

Money is neither my god nor my devil. It is a form of energy that tends to make us more of who we already are, whether it's greedy or loving.

All joy in this world comes from wanting others to be happy, and all suffering in this world comes from wanting only oneself to be happy.

Happiness, not money or prestige, should be regarded as the ultimate currency—the currency by which we take measure of our lives.

Only the insecure strive for security.

Until you transcend the ego, you can do nothing but add to the insanity of the world.

The love of money is the root of all evil. The lack of money is the root of all evil.

It doesn't matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going.

Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things.
Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things.

At such moments, you realize that you and the other are, in fact, one. It's a big realization. Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one.

The West, in its pursuit of material abundance, lost its soul, its interiority. Surrounded by meaninglessness, boredom, anguish, it cannot find its own humanity. All the success of science proves to be of no use—because the house is full of things, but the master of the house is missing. In the East, the end result of centuries of considering matter to be illusory and only consciousness to be real has been that the master is alive but the house is empty. It is difficult to rejoice with hungry stomachs, with sick bodies, with death surrounding you; it is impossible to meditate.

You are rich if you have enough money to satisfy all your desires. So there are two ways to be rich: you earn, inherit, borrow, beg, or steal enough money to meet all your desires; or you cultivate a simple lifestyle of few desires; that way you always have enough money.

“The first principle is that the business should be successful: that it should make money. There is a belief prevalent in America and other Western countries that being successful, making money, is somehow wrong for people who are trying to lead a spiritual life. In Buddhism though it is not the money which is in itself wrong; in fact, a person with greater resources can do much more good in the world than the one without. The question rather is how we make the money; whether we understand where it comes from and how to make it continue to come; and whether we keep a healthy attitude about the money.” 

The great problems we see in the world today will not be solved by people functioning at half capacity cranking out work they don't care about in order to buy more things that will eventually rust and rot.

Fear about money is, at its root, the fear of not surviving.

Though outer wealth rarely leads to inner wealth, inner wealth often does lead to outer wealth.

The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy.

I've heard that the best way to help poor people is to make sure you don't become one of them.

Wealth, my son, should never be your goal in life. Your words are eloquent but they are mere words. True wealth is of the heart, not of the purse.

No, my son, do not aspire for wealth and labor not only to be rich. Strive instead for happiness, to be loved and to love, and most important to acquire peace of mind and serenity. 

Wealth is good when it brings joy to others.

Have an ego and use it, until it's time to put your ego aside.

French essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne wrote, “The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet live very little.” The truth is that you can spend your life any way you want, but you can spend it only once.

Money, influence, and position are nothing compared with brains, principles, energy and perseverances.

The most precious things in life are not those you get for money.

Deep inside each human being is a spirit that hungers for movement and for growth. A live and burgeoning ball of energy, the spirit naturally moves, expands, gyrates—dances, even—purely by virtue of its desire for freedom. It craves beauty over entertainment, meaning over triviality, and knowledge over sensation. American society devotes few harbors to the trade of truth. Too often we sacrifice the pursuit of knowledge, distracted instead by sparkling material things.

The embrace of consumerism and convenience tends to lead to emptiness of the spirit and sickness of the mind and body.

Greek philosopher Epictetus says, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

There is nothing more satisfying than being loved for who you are and nothing more painful than being loved for who you're not but pretending to be.

What you do with what you have is more important than what you have.

We get what we say we want, only to discover that what we want doesn’t satisfy us to the degree that we expect. 

The big problem of any young person's life is to have models to suggest possibilities. Nietzsche says, 'Man is the sick animal.' Man is the animal that doesn't know what to do with itself. The mind has many possibilities, but we can live no more than one life. What are we going to do with ourselves?

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.