
“The more we possess the less we have.”
All Will be Well (2004)
Variant: The more we own the less we have.
"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Words Aptly Spoken (1995)
“The more we possess the less we have.”
All Will be Well (2004)
Variant: The more we own the less we have.
“More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.”
“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
Source: Simulacra and Simulation
The Shoe workers' journal, Volume 16 (1915) p. 4
Variant: What does labor want? We want more school houses and less jails. More books and less guns. More learning and less vice. More leisure and less greed. More justice and less revenge. We want more … opportunities to cultivate our better natures.
Source: [NewsBank, Sandy Fitzgerald, Marsha Blackburn Takes on 'Science Guy' on Climate Change, Newsmax.com, February 16, 2014]
“The More we value things, the less we value ourselves”
“The less we read, the more harmful it is what we read.”
"Andrea del Sarto", line 70
"Less is more" is often misattributed to architects Buckminster Fuller or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It is something of a motto for minimalist philosophy. It was used in 1774 by Christoph Martin Wieland.
Men and Women (1855)
Context: I do what many dream of, all their lives,
— Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive — you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat —
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) — so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.