Quotes About Materialism

I am a spiritual person in an eastern religion kind of way. I learned that happiness for all of us is a switch that you flick in your brain. It doesn't have anything to do with getting a new house, a new car, a new girlfriend, or a new pair of shoes. Our culture is very much about that; we are never happy with what we have today.

We're not all Kim Kardashian. We can't have $15,000 from head to toe every single day.

Progressively saved by the machine from the anxieties that bound his hands and mind to material toil, relieved of a large part of his work and compelled to an ever-increasing speed of action by the devices which his intelligence cannot help ceaselessly creating and perfecting, man is about to find himself abruptly plunged into idleness.

I can't see myself ever spending hundreds of thousands on anything that doesn't come with a toilet.

The Malays are spiritually inclined, tolerant, and easy-going. The non-Malays, and especially the Chinese, are materialistic, aggressive, and have an appetite for work. For equality to come about, it is necessary that these strikingly contrasting races adjust to each other.

In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million," wrote Sam Polk in the New York Times, "and I was angry because it wasn't big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted." Polk

That idea, that God signaled his "election" of a person by showering him or her with money, followed the Dutch and English Protestants to the New World and became a central strand in America's own mythology. Still, over the course of history and around the world, the intensity of people's obsession with money has not been constant over time. It waxes and wanes. The 1980s marks a waxing phase.

Multiple experiments have demonstrated that—above a certain amount for comfort—more money does not make those who have it happier. Instead, it often leaves them feeling unfulfilled and ratchets up their stress.

Economic growth has become a mark of countries' virtue. And what goes for countries goes for people. It's not enough to have high net worth anymore. What matters is the rate of increase—that is, "ever growing wealth.

When I came here, it stunned me at first to realize how much what I had thought of as civilization was really just advertising and marketing, incessant urgings to buy, Buy, BUY. from Dead Cat Bounce

I asked my parents to buy me a Lite Brite like the one I played with in school, and they did. It was the only toy I had that plugged in, that was bought new... I couldn't reconcile it with the other things in my room and in our house, and I can'r remember every playing with it. It was mine, but I didn't feel worthy of using it. It wasn't my turn to use it yet, not when it was still brand-new.

What is the happiest moment you can remember?" He didn't hesitate. "The day they delivered my Ferrari." "Fine! Tonight, you are going to look at me as if I'm your Ferrari." "Do I get to put your top down?

1 JOHN 2 : 15 – 17

You cannot serve both God and Money." MATTHEW 6 : 24

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." —MATTHEW 6:20–21

Do not get attached to worldly things and pursuits. Be in the world, but do not let the world be in you.

Man's many desires are like the small metal coins he carries about in his pocket. The more he has the more they weight him down.

I don't have the prejudices many have today. I don't believe in a naturalist worldview. I don't base my thinking on prejudices or a worldview and do not believe in materialism- (From an interview as cited in the Book the Literature of Possibility by Tom Butler-Bowden).

Organized religion has too often followed the road of other people's institutions. It has made adjustments, compromises, and surrenders to a materialistic civilization for the benefit of material security in spite of occasional twinges of conscience and moral protests. The result has been that today much of organized religion is materialistically solvent but spiritually bankrupt.

The history of prevailing status quos shows decay and decadence infecting the opulent materialism of the Haves. The spiritual life of the Haves is a ritualistic justification of their possessions.

I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn't turn into a price tag.

1) If disciples really trust God, they will live as if treasures in heaven really matter; (2) those whose perspective is distorted by materialism are blinded to God's truth; and (3) one either loves God or money, and those who think they can love both are idolaters.

As John Howard Yoder has said, "If in society we believe in the rights of employees, then the church should be the first employer to deal with workers fairly. If in the wider society we call for the overcoming of racism or sexism or materialism, then the church should be the place where that possibility first becomes real.

oh great, more Really Important People sitting down beside me with their damned mobile phones to screech in LOUD voices condos resale values, great new stock options, frequent flyer miles, who is fucking whom… actually, i think the rest of us are being screwed by these social leeches but god they look good don't they