Quotes About Materialism

You almost believe that you will never come to the end of a roll of tape; and when you do, there is a feeling, nearly, though very briefly, of shock and grief.

I thought that somehow your life would be much different when you're famous... and it's not. You just buy more stuff.

Comparing objects like cars, houses, clothes, and defining life according to those comparisons, instead of trying to discover the real reason for being alive.

While all too many people live in dire poverty, others are caught up in materialism and lifestyles which are destructive of family life and the most basic demands of Christian morality.

What I know for sure: Having the best things is no substitute for having the best life. When you can let go of the desire to acquire, you know you are really on your way.

You certainly have a higher quality of life when you are not on the Forbes list. It just means that your security changes, and you're known for the wrong things.

People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging.

Thirst after body is the great bane of human life.

Things you plan in life usually turn out to be meaningless, things you accumulate without knowing it become your real treasure.

Like Paul Kraston said, all I ask in life is a water bed, a TV and a typewriter. Well, I'll just have an ordinary bed, a TV and a guitar.

I suppose in a way most of my characters are non-consumers, not terribly interested in all the little baubles and artifacts of contemporary life.

What plethora of material goods can possibly atone for a waking life so humanly belittling, if not degrading, as the push-button tasks left to human performers?

Money is that dear thing which, if you're not careful, you can squander your whole life thinking of.

The strongest argument for the un-materialistic character of American life is that we tolerate conditions that are, from a materialistic point of view, intolerable.

This might explain why it is the intellectual and political elite in our culture that seems most deeply wedded to perpetuating the materialist view of reality.

The more we try to ground our identities in external possessions or triumphs, the more we plaster our names on everything we can accumulate, the more we cling to surface and style, the less we find underneath.

What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?

I have wanted women whose very shoes are worth all I have ever possessed.

I loved exceedingly to converse on religious subjects, indeed I took no pleasure in any worldly concerns, and found all worldly possessions vain.

There are times when all the lies you have told about yourself to yourself just fall away. In your twenties, you tell yourself the lie that you are unusual, unprecedented, and interesting. You do this largely by purchasing things or stealing things. You adorn yourself with songs and clothes and borrowed ideas and poses. In your thirties, you tell yourself the lie that you are still in your twenties.

What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, increasing sensual pleasure and for enhancing caloric intake above any nutritional requirement. Nonetheless, the belief that increased production is a worthy social goal is very nearly absolute.

Few people at the beginning of the ninteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.

You could not spend your entire span of life in thrall to the code of stuff. There was no code of stuff. Stuff was just stuff. You couldn't live by it or for it.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.