Quotes About Materialism

I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.

We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.

But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's plan in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe.

I fear that in this thing many rich people deceive themselves. They go on accumulating the means but never using them; making bricks, but never building.

That will help us to understand how the love of accumulating money grows an absorbing passion in men whose imaginations, even in the very beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square, and then into a larger square; and every added guinea, while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new desire

She had a confused, dreamy notion that, if the creditors were all paid, her plate and linen ought to come back to her; but she had an inbred perception that while people owed money they were unable to pay, they couldn't rightly call anything their own.

They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.

Have you ever wondered why the rich and privileged care about, or even bother with, the gift bag? Because they don't need this stuff. If they wanted it, they could afford to buy it, without blinking. But they love the gift bag, beyond reason.

I've got every possible thing I could want. And I wondered, 'Why am I so depressed?' I still don't know sometimes.

Our idea of happiness, some of it, is very tied to the cult of celebrity: there is this golden, wonderful life that I want, and if I dress like that, I'm on my way there.

We very quickly forget about the wonderful things we've got. People lose their excitement because there's too much. Basically we're experiencing nothing, because everything is available to us.

I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious.

Happiness, as a word, has become sort of equated with these smiling images on television, selling some nice cream or food product or something. It's seen a bit as being a stupid consumer.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

I think that the secular work environment in general is a place that's challenging for Christians to thrive in without getting caught up in materialism or in competitiveness or in things that are really not important.

Sometimes you're not blessed with the materialistic stuff but you're blessed with a work ethic.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

Capitalism is an organized system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding around thinking we can be that way, too - if we just work hard enough, sell enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac.

What I think is so amazing about having everything, and feeling like I have everything, is that I don't really find happiness within materialistic things. Like, it's cool if I can buy myself a new car, and I think it's amazing for a week, but then the thrill is over, and I'm like, 'Oh, so I guess that wasn't really happiness.'

Fame was thrilling only until it became grueling. Money was fun only until you ran out of things to buy.

Status-driven, conspicuous consumption thrives from the language of novelty.

Technology loves and thrives and makes gobs of money on conspicuous consumption.