Quotes About Mammon

In his Sermon on the Mount, [Jesus] declares to his disciples: No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matt. 6: 24) The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath. Jesus taught his disciples that they could not have it both ways.

That night Berkman fell asleep in the bosom of the industrial leviathan. "Its torch of liberty is a furnace fire," he said, "consuming, destroying, devastating: a countrywide furnace, in which the bones and marrow of the producers, their limbs and bodies, their health and blood, are cast into Bessemer steel, rolled into armor place, and converted into engines of murder to be consecrated to Mammon his high priests, the Carnegies, the Fricks.

Isaac Newton was being called on to defend to quality of moneys as master of the Royal Mint. He had to face the problem of the debasement of the currency through the practice of shaving some of the silver off silver coins to make more coins (an easy way to make money, when you think about it). Convicted coin-clippers were publicly hung at Tyburn—offences against God were to be forgiven, but offences against capital and mammon deserved capital punishment!

Renunciation means that none can serve both God and Mammon.

You cannot serve god and mammon. You have to make a choice.

God the Compassionate and the Merciful, Tolerance incarnate, allows Mammon to have his nine days' wonder.

Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible incarnation, are the God and the Mammon of the world.

A Warwickshire priest, John Rous, writing a history of England at the end of the fifteenth century, chronicled the ruthless large-scale destruction inflicted on the North by William the Conqueror (see chapter 14), and asked what now should be said of the 'modern' destruction of villages. 'The root of this evil', he said, 'is greed. The plague of avarice infects these times and it blinds men. They are not the sons of God, but of Mammon'.

Wealth is a thing, earned with honesty and justice. Its opposite is the Mammon of unrighteousness.

No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). He speaks frequently and unambiguously to economic issues. He says, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" and "Woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation" (Luke 6:20, 24).

As Martin Luther writes: The sinful worship of Mammon does not consist in eating and drinking and wearing clothes . . . for the needs of this life and of the body make food and clothing a requirement. But the sin consists in being concerned about it and making it the reliance and confidence of your heart . . .1

Jesus Christ and all the writers of the New Testament call us to break free of mammon lust and live in joyous trust...They point us toward a way of living in which everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good. This reality frames the heart of Christian simplicity. It is the means of liberation and power to do what is right and to overcome the forces of fear and avarice.

We have among us a class of mammon worshippers, whose one test of conservatism or radicalism is the attitude one takes with respect to accumulated wealth. Whatever tends to preserve the wealth of the wealthy is called conservatism, and whatever favors anything else, no matter what is called socialism.

He beheld Lourdes, contaminated by Mammon, turned into a spot of abomination and perdition, transformed into a huge bazaar, where everything was sold, masses and souls alike!

Call it Westhusing's Theorem: In a democracy, the health of the military professional ethic is inversely proportional to the presence of hired auxiliaries on the battlefield. The pursuit of mammon and the values to which military professionals profess devotion are fundamentally incompatible and irreconcilable. Where profit-and-loss statements govern, devotion to duty, honor, and country inevitably takes a hit.

He was a swine whose only god was gold.

It happened, you see, after the war, when I saw people making money while the others were dying in the trenches. You saw it and you couldn't do anything about it. Then later I was at the League of Nations, and there I saw the light. I really saw the world was ruled by the Golden Calf, by Mammon! Oh, no kidding! Implacably. Social consciousness certainly came to me late.

You can't serve God and Mammon." When Jesus used the word "Mammon," he used it almost synonymously with pleasure. So Jesus was saying that you can't serve God and Mammon at the same time. If you want to be his disciple, you have to leave Mammon. It's not that you shouldn't be comfortable; it's not about having comfort or not, but if you're seeking comfort, forget it. This path is definitely not yours. What he said is very true.

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fellFrom heaven; for ev'n in heaven his looks and thoughtsWere always downward bent, admiring moreThe riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold,Than aught divine or holy else enjoyedIn vision beatific.

Materialism has made you worship Mammon and in this material world everything comes too easily. Heat comes too easily and cold. Money comes too easily. Don't forget that it will go as easily as well. We have all grown soft from this ease. Position changes easily. Values shift elusively. When everything is totalled up we have evolved a fine variety of flushing toilets but not a very good world.

It is as necessary for a poor man to give away, as for a rich man. Many poor men are more devoted worshipers of Mammon than some rich men.

Nothing that could be got from the heart of the earth could have been put to better purposes than the silver the king's miners got for him. There were people in the country who, when it came into their hands, degraded it by locking it up in a chest, and then it grew diseased and was called mammon, and bred all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left the king's hands it never made any but friends, and the air of the world kept it clean.

In fact, Luther says the "great idol Mammon" has anointed "three trustees—rust, moths, and thieves"—that ought to remind us of the temporality of possessions.12

Some make gods of their pleasures; some choose Mammon for their god; some make gods of their own supposed excellencies, or the outward advantages they have above their neighbors: some choose one thing for their god, and others another. But men can be happy in no other God but the God of Israel: he is the only fountain of happiness.