"Philip Slater has one of the most insightful societal minds in America. . . We need to overcome what Philip Slater wrote about in 1980--- our addiction to "Moneythink." We need to rediscover that life is about choices and experiences we create, not things we buy. In the book Slater tells us that wealth addiction can take many forms--- money addiction, possession addiction, power addiction, fame addiction, spending addiction.”

Scott Burns, Asset Builder

“For Slater, we are a nation of addicts, from the ‘closet addicts’ (who don't have lots of money but sure wish they did) to ‘heavy addicts’ on the scale of John D. Rockefeller and Howard Hughes. What makes for addiction? ‘Moneythink’: forgetting that money is merely symbol, that it is means and not ends. Slater's four signs of addiction (if you were wondering) are ‘a closing hand,’ confusion about goals, increasing possession with decreasing use, and ‘tension and search behavior.’ Ultimately ‘moneythink’ makes for unhappiness: ‘Addicts never see the rainbow because they're too busy looking for the pot of gold.’"

Kirkus Reviews

"There are many, many people who are genuinely indifferent to money, just as there are many who are indifferent to alcohol. The idea that everybody wants money is propaganda circulated by wealth attics to make themselves feel better about their addiction."

"One of the main reasons wealth makes people unhappy is that it gives them too much control over what they experience. They try to translate their own fantasies into reality instead of tasting what reality itself has to offer."

"Possessions have to be cared for and maintained — cleaned, repaired, protected, moved about, and so on. Each time you buy something, you acquire, in effect, a new boss: someone who requires work from you. An owner is simply a servant with as many masters as he or she has possessions.”

"If work hasn’t enough personal and social value in and of itself for us to perform it without money, then money won’t persuade us to do it effectively. What it will do is motivate us to find ways to maximize the money we get for whatever work we do do. Getting people to chase money, in other words, produces nothing except people chasing money. Using money as a motivator leads to a progressive degradation in the quality of everything produced."