James Wallman > Quotes

“the best place to find status, identity, meaning, and happiness is in experiences,”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“Instead of trying to understand who we really are, we reach for the “Real Thing”. And when the goods we buy fail to match up to those deep desires, instead of giving up on material goods, we just keep banging our heads against the wall and buying more.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation

“Suddenly I realized that nothing could be worse than that moment,” she says. “And as that thought came to me, I felt this very odd, very strange sense of peace. In that moment, I realized, if no one could help, the only person who could do something about it was me.” From”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“In that system, where more is always better, you can never have enough.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“people sacrifice too much life to get more stuff.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“It really opened my eyes to how little I used all the stuff I owned,”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“We live in a cluttered world of too much information and too much stuff.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“They were called “minimalists,” and they thought that the best route to happiness was not by getting more, but by having less.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“Life is not about having things. It’s about having good experiences.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Living More with Less

“One path that most governments and businesses do not want us to go down is minimalism.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“Are you stuffocating too? Stuffocation is the story of one of today’s most acute, till now unnamed, afflictions. It is about how you, me, and society in general, instead of feeling enriched by the things we own, are feeling stifled by them. Instead”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Living More with Less

“Overwhelmed, and suffocating from stuff, we are suffering from an anxiety that I call Stuffocation. Nicodemus,”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“as the psychologist Oliver James observed in Affluenza, the more a society resembles the United States, in that it becomes materialistic, the higher the rate of emotional distress.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“The more innovative and connected a system is, the more quickly an innovation will spread. In”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“By having less and doing more, we will be happier, healthier, richer, in every sense: less clutter, less regret, less anxiety, more meaning, more flow, more intrinsic enjoyment, better conversations, more connections, a healthier take on status, and a stronger sense of belonging.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“It is inspired by something the essayist William Gibson once said: “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“as per the law of unintended consequences, no matter what people’s intention when they do something, they rarely know what the ultimate outcome of their actions will be.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Living More with Less

“The industrialists, with their machines and factories and clock-time, began the onslaught against anyone who was content to take it easy.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“The first was that industry should shift its focus from producing ever better products to creating products that would only last a short time.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“People have been turning their backs on civilization ever since it began.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“we are becoming far less materialistic, as only around one in two now hold materialist values.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“We still believe that to be considered successful, by our peers and by ourselves, we need material badges of success—and that still means a lot of stuff. The”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“I hate taking pictures,’ he says. ‘I feel that if you pick up a camera you take yourself out of the moment. You’re no longer there, living it purely for the experience. You’re trying to record it for someone else.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Living More with Less

“fewer chemicals and additives in your food, a greater sense of self-sufficiency, and more time to spend together as a family. But”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“…[we are] making decisions in an age of abundance using mental tools honed in an age of scarcity.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation

“Everyone is an autobiographer nowadays, it’s like everyone is actively writing their own biography all the time,”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Living More with Less

“Let other people speed past you on the highway to success, if that is what they want. Just because they are hurrying about, it doesn’t mean you have to.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“They are quite happy to have things, if they need them, but they are not hoping to find meaning, status, or happiness in material things. The”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Living More with Less

“In the 1980s, people wanted a fast car. Now they want a good story to tell.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever

“You are more likely to be happy, so studies have shown, if you do something for intrinsic reasons.”
― James Wallman, Stuffocation: Why We've Had Enough of Stuff and Need Experience More Than Ever