The circumstances of our lives actually matter less to our happiness than the sense of control we feel over our lives.

Once you have a very, very large budget, you actually look for expensive things to spend it on.

Reality isn't a particularly good guide to human happiness.

When you can't smoke, if you stand and stare out of the window on your own, you're an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand and stare out of the window on your own with a cigarette, you're a philosopher.

Engineers, medical people, scientific people, have an obsession with solving the problems of reality, when actually ... once you reach a basic level of wealth in society, most problems are actually problems of perception.

When you place a value on things like health, love, sex and other things, and learn to place a material value on what you've previously discounted for being merely intangible ... you realize you're much, much wealthier than you ever imagined.

The circumstances of our lives actually matter less to our happiness than the sense of control we feel over our lives.