How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life Quotes

“Experience has taught us that material wants know no natural bounds, that they will expand without end unless we consciously restrain them. Capitalism rests precisely on this endless expansion of wants. That is why, for all its success, it remains so unloved. It has given us wealth beyond measure, but has taken away the chief benefit of wealth: the consciousness of having enough.”
― Robert Skidelsky Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life

“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little. Epicurus”
― Robert Skidelsky, How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life

“It is not just that we want more but that we want more than others, who at the same time want more than us; this fuels an endless race.”
― Robert Skidelsky, How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life

“The UK office for National Statistics has identified the things that matter most for happiness as "health, relationships, work, and the environment" - a list that tallies closely with our basic goods. Given that our lives have not noticeably improved in these respects since 1974 it is hardly surprising that we do not feel any happier.
Are we then suggesting a return to living standards of 1974? Not necessarily, for the luxuries acquired since then may, even if they have added nothing to our real well-being, be painful to forgo. This is an instance of the general truth that damaging social changes cannot always be rectified simply by being reversed, any more than a man flattened by a steamroller can be restored to life by being run over backwards. What we are saying is that the long-term goal of economic policy should henceforth not be growth, but the restructuring of our collective existence so as to facilitate the good life.”
― Robert Skidelsky, How much is enough?: The love of money and the case for the good life

“I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry, Half a loaf for a bite to eat, Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot, Will have more wealth than a Sultan’s realm. – Omar Khayyam”
― Robert Skidelsky, How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life

“Capitalism rests precisely on this endless expansion of wants. That is why, for all its success, it remains so unloved. It has given us wealth beyond measure, but has taken away the chief benefit of wealth: the consciousness of having enough.”
― Robert Skidelsky, How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life

“Smith’s doctrine of self-interest did more than just turn avarice into a virtue; it turned classical virtue into a vice.”
― Robert Skidelsky, How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life

“Indeed, we are slowly reverting to the conditions of earlier times, when societies were divided into a small class of rentiers and a large class of servants, without, however, the hierarchical structure which made such inequality of status more palatable.”
― Robert Skidelsky, How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life

“Certainly, it would be perverse to argue that it is fear of leisure which keeps most of our noses to the grindstone: much more important is fear of unemployment and the loss of income which this entails.”
― Robert Skidelsky, How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life

“But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, With all the freaks of wanton wealth array’d— In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, The toiling pleasure sickens into pain; And, e’en while fashion’s brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks if this be joy.”
― Robert Skidelsky, How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life