Quotes About Materialism

When we look forward to heaven, it shouldn't be material items that draw us, but love, joy, peace, and other intangibles. — Patrick Mitchell —

Now nothing is happening and nothing will ever happen again. Money has taken away everything.

In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.

Papa, there's an armored jeep guarding the 99¢ store on Old Country Road and you're talking about gomiki?

I wanted to save them from themselves, from the idiotic consumer culture that was bleeding them softly. I

What I like most about Buddhism really is its fearlessness. So much of what warps people is fear of death and fear of impermanence. So much of what we do is simply strategies to try and hold back death, trying to buy time with material things. So at its best Buddhism provides people with a way of seeing their own frailty: you need less in the way of material objects and fortresses around yourself.

Is it any duller than on EARTH? Whose inhabitants spend most of their lives trying to get laid, watching sitcoms on television, and grunting for money?

Christians—who have no patience with Darwinistic materialism—often sound as progressive as the most ardent evolutionist. They look for "new" theologies, "new" ways of worship, and "new" music, being quite willing to toss out their entire "old-fashioned" Christian heritage.

You hated it—hated its nasty ugly ways, its noise and smoke and most of all its shaggy shitty itch for gelt, gelt for this and gelt for that until a man couldn't fart without paying

A lot of people measure a man by what he's got. I've decided to measure myself by what I can give up.

What difference is there betwixt an idolater and an avaricious man, but that the idolater has, perhaps, one or two idols, whereas the avaricious man has many?

Prefería tener en la cabecera de su cama los 20 libros de Aristóteles encuadernados en negro o en rojo que vestidos lujosos, el violín y el salterio.

Living doesn't cost much, but showing off does.

Consumerism has become our most potent ideology because it so contemptuously dismisses our natual human modes of trait display, and it keeps us too busy -working, shopping. and product displaying- to remember what we can signal without all the products.

Consumerism turns the tables on ancestral patterns of human courtship. It makes courtship a commodity that can be bought and sold.

Many products are signals first and material objects second. Our vast social-primate brains evolved to pursue one central social goal: to look good in the eyes of others. Buying impressive products in a money-based economy is just the most recent way to fulfill that goal.

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when you havnt any future to think of. No, Eliza: do as this lady does: think of other people's futures; but never think of your own. Think of chocolates, and taxis, and gold, and diamonds.

A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.

You're really spread out now, you've got stuff all over the WORLD! You've got stuff at home, stuff in storage, stuff in Honolulu, stuff in Maui, stuff in your pockets...supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain.

The Human Species could have been great but instead we became satisfied with lights on our tennis shoes.

I think the human race has squandered its gift, and I think this country has squandered its promise. I think people in America sold out very cheaply, for sneakers and cheeseburgers. And I don't think it's fixable

It's called the 'American dream' because you have to be asleep to believe it.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much. We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living but not a life. We've added years to life, not life to years.