Vicki Robin > Quotes

“If you live for having it all, what you have is never enough.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“We no longer live life. We consume it.”
― Vicki Robin

“Americans used to be 'citizens.' Now we are 'consumers.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“Money is something you trade your life energy for. You sell your time for money. It doesn’t matter that Ned over there sells his time for a hundred dollars and you sell yours for twenty dollars an hour. Ned’s money is irrelevant to you. The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“He who knows he has enough is rich.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“Once we’re above the survival level, the difference between prosperity and poverty lies simply in our degree of gratitude.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“The key is remembering that anything you buy and don’t use, anything you throw away, anything you consume and don’t enjoy is money down the drain, wasting your life energy and wasting the finite resources of the planet. Any waste of your life energy means more hours lost to the rat race, making a dying. Frugality is the user-friendly and earth-friendly lifestyle.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“put your life in service to your values rather than putting your time in service to money.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“How you spend your money is how you vote on what exists in the world”
― Vicki Robin

“Frugality is enjoying the virtue of getting good value for every minute of your life energy and from everything you have the use of.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“We shift from comparing ourselves to others to considering our real needs and desires. We shift from “more” to “enough” and ultimately get more of what money can’t buy. Priceless.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“It is easier to tell our therapist about our sex life than it is to tell our accountant about our finances.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“The only real asset you have is your time. The hours of your life.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“Consumption seems to be our favorite high, our nationally sanctioned addiction, the all-American form of substance abuse.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“four rules for getting off the diet-go-round: Eat when you’re hungry. Eat exactly what your body wants. Eat each bite consciously. Stop when your body has had enough.1 Very simple. All you have to do is be conscious”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“One day a young girl watched her mother prepare a ham for baking. At one point the daughter asked, “Mom, why did you cut off both ends of the ham?” “Well, because my mother always did,” said the mother. “But why?” “I don’t know—let’s go ask Grandma.” So they went to Grandma’s and asked her, “Grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that?” “My mother always did it,” said Grandma. “But why?” “I don’t know—let’s go ask Great-grandma.” So off they went to Great-grandma’s. “Great-grandma, when you prepared the ham for baking, you always cut off both ends—why did you do that?” “Well,” Great-grandma said, “the pan was too small.” Just as we can get caught in outmoded habit-patterns passed down through generations, we can also get trapped by our habitual thinking just as much as—and just as erroneously as—people who maintained until recently that the earth was visibly and verifiably flat. We also get stuck in unconscious and invisible boxes that limit our ability to think in new ways.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“As you take your eyes off the false prize (of more, better, and different stuff), you put them on the real prizes: friends, family, sharing, caring, learning, meeting challenges, intimacy, rest, and being present, connected, and respected. In other words, those best things in life that are free. Like all things natural, building this wealth takes time, attention, patience, and reciprocity (that volleying of giving and receiving that builds relationships).”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —Howard Thurman, philosopher and theologian”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“Instead of leisure being simply “relaxed activity,” it was transformed into an opportunity for increased consumption—even consumption of leisure itself (as in travel and vacations).”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“What kind of society turns its young people into a profit center for the debt industry?”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“Along with racism and sexism, our society has a form of caste system based on what you do for money. We call that jobism, and it pervades our interactions with one another on the job, in social settings and even at home. Why else would we consider housewives second-class citizens? Or teachers lower status than doctors even though their desk-side manner with struggling students is far better than many doctors’ bedside manner with the ill and dying?”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“happiness increases heart health, strengthens the immune system, combats stress, reduces aches and pains, reduces chronic illness, and lengthens our lives.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“training away the money-wasting habits”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“No matter how much you have, that voice of “more would be better” drives you to make acquisition the name of your game. Greed is one of the many strings in the human heart, and it can be pro-survival, but unchecked by a sense of fairness, balance, and love, it can gut our capacity for joy.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“We have devalued the price of the things we need most to survive on a daily basis yet overvalued many of the things we can live without.”
― Vicki Robin, Blessing the Hands That Feed Us: What Eating Closer to Home Can Teach Us About Food, Community, and Our Place on Earth

“Consider the average worker in almost any urban industrialized city. The alarm rings at six forty-five and our workingman or -woman is up and at it. Check the phone. Shower. Dress in the professional uniform—suits for some, coveralls for others, scrubs for the medical professionals, jeans and T-shirts for construction workers. Breakfast, if there’s time. Grab commuter mug and briefcase (or lunch box). Hop in the car for the daily punishment called rush hour or get on a bus or train packed crushingly tight. On the job from nine to five (or longer). Deal with the boss. Deal with the coworker sent by the devil to rub you the wrong way. Deal with suppliers. Deal with clients/customers/patients. E-mails pile up. Act busy. Scroll through social media feeds. Hide mistakes. Smile when handed impossible deadlines. Give a sigh of relief when the ax known as “restructuring” or “downsizing”—or just plain getting laid off—falls on other heads. Shoulder the added workload. Watch the clock. Argue with your conscience but agree with the boss. Smile again. Five o’clock. Back in the car or on the bus or train for the evening commute. Home. Act human with your partner, kids, or roommates. Cook. Post a picture of your dinner online. Eat. Watch an episode of your favorite show. Answer one last e-mail. Bed. Eight hours of blessed oblivion—if we’re lucky.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“Passion, pain, what’s at hand—these are doorways to finding a purpose beyond material acquisition.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life

“The dreams we had of finding meaning and fulfillment through our jobs have faded into the reality of professional politics, burnout, boredom and intense competition.”
― Vicki Robin

“Learn to choose quality of life over standard of living.”
― Vicki Robin, Your Money or Your Life