Charlie Croker, the wealthy real estate tycoon in Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full, delivers a striking speech at a press conference about what truly matters in life. He tells the audience that the only thing a person really owns is their character and their way of living. Everything else—wealth, possessions, even the body itself—is temporary. He compares the human body to a fragile container of blood that eventually must be returned. He questions why people spend their lives accumulating material things when no one is remembered for their possessions. Instead, he urges people to focus on the divine spark within them—the only thing of true value.
Croker, a man who has enjoyed every luxury imaginable—private jets, mansions, and an army of staff—initially appears as the ultimate success story. But beneath the surface, he’s drowning in debt due to a failed construction project. When the bank starts seizing his assets, he clings desperately to his extravagant lifestyle. Even when giving up his jet would significantly reduce his debt, he tries to stop it from being taken.
As reality sinks in, Croker spirals into despair, realizing how much money he has wasted over the years on extravagant homes, expensive cars, and even a personal zoo. The deeper he falls into crisis, the more he questions why he ever needed so much in the first place.
At his lowest point, he’s offered an escape: a lawyer approaches him with a deal. If Croker publicly supports a Georgia Tech football star accused of rape, powerful political figures who want to avoid a scandal will ensure the bank stops coming after him. Croker has no opinion on the player’s guilt or innocence, but feeling trapped, he reluctantly agrees.
During this time, he undergoes knee surgery and meets Conrad Hensley, a young caregiver who introduces him to Stoicism through The Stoics, a book that helped Hensley survive a brutal prison stint. As Croker learns about philosophers like Epictetus and Agrippinus, he starts to see his situation differently. He asks Hensley what Stoicism has to say about bankruptcy, expecting it to be too trivial for philosophers to consider. But Hensley shares a passage from Epictetus, which suggests that people don’t fear starvation—they fear losing their comforts and status.
Croker remains skeptical and pushes back: “What if you lose everything? Your home, your income, your car—what then? What good do lofty ideals do when you’re out on the street?”
Hensley responds with a lesson from Epictetus: even beggars survive. If they can find food every day, why wouldn’t Croker be able to? Croker scoffs at the idea, saying he’d rather die than beg. But Hensley smiles and quotes Epictetus again: the real fear isn’t poverty, it’s humiliation. True greatness doesn’t come from wealth—it comes from character.
Armed with this new perspective, Croker faces his press conference. Instead of endorsing the football player as expected, he delivers a speech inspired by Stoicism. He declares that the bank can take everything—it doesn’t matter. He reminds the audience that beggars survive, proving that survival isn’t the real fear. What truly terrifies people is losing status. The mayor and the lawyer, expecting Croker to stick to their script, watch in shock as he refuses to play along.
The crowd thinks he has lost his mind. The mayor shuts the press conference down. But Croker, despite losing his wealth, his status, and the deal that could have saved him, finally feels free.
As chaos erupts around him, he feels a deep sense of peace. He recalls Epictetus’ words about enduring hardship and training for greatness. For the first time in his life, he has shed the burdens of wealth and ego. He is no longer a prisoner of his possessions—he has become something greater.
Though A Man in Full is fiction, Croker’s journey reflects a real struggle. The desire for more—more money, more things, more recognition—can become a trap. When we let material wealth define us, we risk losing our principles in the pursuit of keeping it. Like Croker, we can look to the Stoics for wisdom: true freedom comes not from what we own, but from who we are. Like Charlie Croker, we can look to the Stoics for guidance. Here is a short selection of Stoic quotes on the topics of wealth and luxury:
Epictetus
- “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
– Golden Sayings and Fragments - “It is better to die of hunger with distress and fear gone than to live upset in the midst of plenty.”
– Enchiridion 12 - “Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.”
– Fragments 145
Seneca the Younger
- “Is it not madness and the wildest lunacy to desire so much when you can hold so little?”
– Consolation to Helvia - “It is stupid to think that it is the amount of money and not the state of mind that matters!”
– Consolation to Helvia - “You will only learn from such things to crave still greater.”
– Letters 16.8 - “The man who adapts himself to his slender means and makes himself wealthy on a little sum, is the truly rich man.”
– Letters 108.11 - “I shall despise riches alike when I have them and when I have them not, being neither cast down if they shall lie elsewhere, nor puffed up if they shall glitter around me.”
– On the Happy Life
Marcus Aurelius
- “No one who is good and honorable would regret having passed a pleasure by.”
– Meditations 8.10 - “As for me, I am happy if the ruling force in my mind is sound, if I do not turn away from anyone, nor any of those things that happen to men, but can look upon all things with kindly eyes, and value everything according to its true worth.”
– Meditations 8.41
