Quotes about materialism

A civilized woman's demands: A man who will (1) make her come … sometimes but (2) pay the bills … at all times.

The modern materialists are not permitted to doubt they are forbidden to believe.

Civilization has been an intermittent phenomenon to this truth we have allowed ourselves to be blinded by the insolence of material success.

When a man's girlfriend's parents ask him what it is that he does for a living: they’re not really concerned about him they’re concerned about their daughter’s tummy.

He had brought no possessions with him he would take none away. There were none to have--everything of value was in the school computer or his own head and hands.

A fast car can make women 'like' a man and a man 'like' women … fast.

If every lover was treated like they matter — everyday valentine’s day wouldn’t be so 'special.

We do not teach history we recreate the experience. We follow the chain of consequences - the tracks of the beast in its forest. Look behind our words and you see the broad sweep of social behavior that no historian has ever touched.

Late modern society is principally concerned with purchasing things, in ever greater abundance and variety, and so has to strive to fabricate an ever greater number of desires to gratify, and to abolish as many limits and prohibitions upon desire as it can. Such a society is already implicitly atheist and so must slowly but relentlessly apply itself to the dissolution of transcendent values. It cannot allow ultimate goods to distract us from proximate goods. Our sacred writ is advertising, our p

I've never found time to indulge more than a single ambition.

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.

Self-consciousness of the manner is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

A man may follow vanity as truly in the counting-house as in the theatre. If he be spending his life in amassing wealth, he passes his days in a vain show.

The conviction that's underneath a lot of other statements is, "I don't trust Gjod.

I struggled with insecurity because I was trying to find my security in things. But when I began serving God with all my heart, my security was in Him.

Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety.

Once we become tethered to the network, we really don't need to keep computers busy. THEY KEEP US BUSY.

Money and machines anesthetize neediness. They put us in charge, in control. As long as the money holds out and the machines are in good repair, we don't need to pray.

Adams was in a hurry and ordered his horse drawn carriage to wait for him in front of his house. The horses were spooked before he got in the carriage, and the carriage was destroyed in an accident. Pondering what could have happened to him , Adams retreated to Psalm 20's injunctions against trusting in chariots and horses.

The problem of architecture as I see it is the problem of all art – the elimination of the human element from the consideration of the form.

Q: What is wrong with the world?A: Everybody pays attention to pictures of things. Nobody pays attention to things themselves.

The connection between spirit and other matter, or between the visible and invisible world of human beings, is at present little understood. I am of the opinion that the connection is far more intimate than is generally believed. Of this fact there is the most positive and convincing proof. Many may be so averse to receiving new truths, which set aside all their preconceived opinions, as to disregard the positive evidence of their senses.

The Whites have carried to these (colonial) people the worst that they could carry: the plagues of the world: materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism, and syphilis. Moreover, since what these people possessed on their own was superior to anything we could give them, they have remained themselves... The sole result of the activity of the colonizers is: they have everywhere aroused hatred.

How much does he lack himself who must have many things?

Ambition’ is ‘greed’ rebranded.

We had made the error of staying small – and there is no more unforgivable crime in America.

Ambition is greed without makeup.

I know that certain minds would regard as audacious the idea of relating the laws which preside over the play of our organs to those laws which govern inanimate bodies; but, although novel, this truth is none the less incontestable. To hold that the phenomena of life are entirely distinct from the general phenomena of nature is to commit a grave error, it is to oppose the continued progress of science.

Money cannot buy you love. But it sure can buy you things that some people will love you for having.

A wedding is a ceremony men fund with money they know they don’t have … to prove the love they think they have.

A broke man’s lover doesn’t feel ‘loved’ on her Birthday, Christmas, and, on Valentine’s Day.

The essence of the charge made against the modern high-status ideal is that it is guilty of effecting a gigantic distortion of priorities, of elevating to the highest level of achievement a process of material accumulation that should instead be only one of many factors determining the direction of our lives under a more truthful, more broadly defined conception of ourselves.

It was a night of early spring,The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;Around us shadows and the windListened for what was never spoken.Though half a score of years are gone,Spring comes as sharply now as then—But if we had it all to doIt would be done the same again.It was a spring that never came;But we have lived enough to knowThat what we never have, remains;It is the things we have that go.

The objects of the present life fill the human eye with a false magnification because of their immediacy.

The author jokes that the culture at his first job at Entertainment Weekly chased away the worthwhile aspects of his Brown education, but in so doing he makes a subtle point about the profound impact of the culture with which we surround ourselves and how easily we can be defined and constrained by our jobs.

Matter is but the artificial division of energy.

If you’re an Orthodox believer, then what sustains this framework is the obligation that you follow. But if you live in a democratic, liberal world whose motto is: “Make choices and manage your choices according to what is good for you,” then there is a built-in tension between that which connects and that which divides. Between the material and the intellectual or ethical. Materialism is not a dirty word, but in this tension between the individual and the material on the one hand, and the commu

Once employed, the employed's friends are reduced to creatures that he only sees when he has a new problem, or, something new to show off.

When a man's bank balance becomes too small, his woman flees. For a man to do the same, his woman's body — or vagina — has to do the opposite.

Idolatry means turning a good thing into the ultimate thing.

We've got so much in this life that all we know how to do is want more. So we concentrate on the wrong things--things we can see--as being the measure of a person. We think if we win something big or buy something snazzy it'll make us more than we are. Our hearts know that's not true, but the eyes are powerful. It's easier to fix on what we can see than listen to the still, small voice of a whispering heart.

We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened, that we can see nothing for excess of light, and go banging our noses against the first tree we come to in the wood. We insist, now-a-days, on grasping the other world with stretched-out arms of flesh and bone.

The Master said, “A true gentleman is one who has set his heart upon the Way. A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not even worth conversing with.”(Analects 4.9)

The Master said, “If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.

An idea? An idea won't get you nothing but another idea. You need money, cash, to make anything happen in this doggone world.

He would henceforth worship and defend the very reason for Joy, the Almighty Maker of Joy.

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

Carnal love is the love of table, not of the host.

Winnie the Pooh finds comfort in counting his pots of honey, and Rabbit finds comfort in knowing where his relations are – even if he doesn't need them at the moment.

I love the quaint saying of a dying man, who exclaimed, "I have no fear of going home; I have sent all before me; God's finger is on the latch of my door, and I am ready for Him to enter.

Charity fits the economy of scarcity, because it supports the blasphemous myth that the rich are rich because they deserve to be, and their riches are theirs to deal with as they please. With such charity, we are not worthy to tell the story of manna in the wilderness, to pretend to eat together at the Lord’s Supper, or claim the Year of Jubilee as our own.

John D Rockefeller read his Bible religiously, but kept his ledger in a different drawer.

What's a man worth without love ? $.89 worth of chemicals." Hawkeye Pierce

Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power.

The narrator refers to a character as "an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them.

you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes.

On Christ's attitude toward His disciples: "If I gave away My big all to get to you, can you give away your little all to follow Me?

I am learning that man can live profoundly without masses of things.

She chose to look at her surroundings where they "think missionary" mind-set.

Freedom from anxiety is characterized by three inner attitudes. If what we have we received as a gift, and if what we have is to be cared for by God, and if what we have is available to others, then we will possess freedom from anxiety.

Being self-owned is a state of mind.

The Must be worthless by our estimation or keep us enslaved by an intemperate love of it.

The one single use of things which we call our own is that they might be his who hath need of them.

We dabble in many things; but the one great real idea of our age, not copied from any other, not pretended, not raised to life by any conjuration, is the Much Making of Things – not the making of beautiful things, not the joy of spending living energy in creative work; rather the shameless, merciless driving and over-driving, wasting and draining of the last bit of energy, only to produce heaps and heaps of things – things ugly, things harmful, things useless, and at the best largely unnecessary

To possess possessions, a man will "sell himself" to have what another has, but it never dawns on him ~ that the more he gets, the less he keeps of himself.

It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have e

The double consequence of artifice--to project sentience out onto the made world and in turn to make sentience itself into a complex living artifact--is thus fractured, neatly fractured, into two separable consequences, one of which (projection) belongs to one group of people, and the other of which (reciprocation) belongs to another group of people, and this shattering of the original integrity of projection-reciprocation into a double location has its most sustained registration in the texture

Capitalism has turned human beings into commodities. To the owner of a restaurant: the cook and a bag of potatoes are equally important.

Communism in a capitalist world requires eliminating the hope of the citizens for owning what others own.

Because there is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you

o. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti hav

I found myself with a perseverance worthy of a much better cause.

You only truly possess that which you cannot lose in a shipwreck.

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.

Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.

Sooner or later everything will turn to dust - except love

Coming from a business family, she shied away from abstractions.

Imagine if all the car makers in the world were to sit down together to design one extremely simple, embellishment-free, functional car that was made from the most environmentally-sustainable materials, how cheap to buy and humanity-and-Earth-considerate that vehicle would be. And imagine all the money that would be saved by not having different car makers duplicating their efforts, competing and trying to out-sell each other, and overall how much time that would liberate for all those people in

The Hartle-Hawking derivation of the unconditional probability of the existence of a universe of our sort is inconsistent with classical theism. The unconditional probability is very high, near to 1. For purposes of simplification, we are saying the probability is 99 percent; there is a 99 percent probability that a universe of our sort—I will call it a Hartle-Hawking universe—exists uncaused.The universe exists uncaused since the probability amplitude is determined by a summation or path integr

...in principle, one can predict everything in the universe solely from physical laws. Thus, the long-standing 'first cause' problem intrinsic in cosmology has been finally dispelled.

I believe the defenders of intelligent design deserve our gratitude for challenging a scientific world view that owes some of the passion displayed by its adherents precisely to the fact that it is thought to liberate us from religion. That world view is ripe for displacement....

The living cell is the most complex system of its size known to mankind. Its host of specialized molecules, many found nowhere else but within living material, are themselves already enormously complex. They execute a dance of exquisite fidelity, orchestrated with breathtaking precision. Vastly more elaborate than the most complicated ballet, the dance of life encompasses countless molecular performers in synergetic coordination. Yet this is a dance with no sign of a choreographer. No intelligen

There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasing: for their sake, the earth is to be loved. And there is such a variety of well-invented things that the earth is like the breasts of a woman: useful as well as pleasing.

Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.

It has always been dangerous to institutionalize hope, and we no longer live in a society in which we will be allowed to institutionalize memory.

All images and sensations, if idolatrously mistaken for Joy itself, soon honestly confessed themselves inadequate. All said, in a last resort, "It is not high. I am only a reminder. Look! Look! What do I remind you of?" CS Lewis

A church service starts and ends with a prayer. A magazine starts and ends with an advert.

A materialistic world will not be won to Christ by a materialistic church.

America is a young country, young and brash and prone to errors. Like teenagers. For all our inherent goodness, we’ve been cursed with bright, shiny object disease and we don’t want a cure. Not now. Not till we get our little taste, till our kids get theirs.

I wanted to be a sadhu. But what good would it do for me to be a sadhu in India? A real test of faith would be to go back to one of the most materialistic, money-worshipping countries on earth [America] and be a sadhu there.

That’s what money will buy you, in America,” Brown had said, firmly. “People say Americans are materialistic. But do you know why?” “Why?” asked Milgrim, more concerned with this uncharacteristically expansive mode of expression on Brown’s part. “Because they have better stuff,” Brown had replied. “No other reason.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This

How good something is should never be determined by its cost, designer, origin, or its perceived value by others.

Everything that I hold will eventually be gone. Subsequently, the quality of my life will depend on whether I choose to appreciate those things ‘now’ or wait until ‘then.

We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives the

Materialism sets us free from sin-by proving that there is no such thing as sin. There's just antisocial behavior, which we can control with measures like laws and educational programs.