Quotes About Materialism

Level 7 Selling Our Souls for a Video Game, Part One

Success isn't found in the eyes of others: buying things you don't need, with money you don't have, to impress people you won't know in 20 years' time.

We all know perfectly well that the man who lives out his life as a consumer," he writes in "The Coming Crisis in Psychiatry," "a sexual partner, an 'other-directed' executive; who avoids boredom and anxiety by consuming tons of newsprint, miles of film, years of TV time; that such a man has somehow betrayed his destiny as a human being.

Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.

Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven. (Prov. 23:4–5)

If you believe that the atoms that are inside your brain and your body act differently because they are in a living person than if they were in a rock or a crystal, then what you're saying is that the laws of physics are wrong.

If pursuing material things becomes your only goal, you will fail in so many ways. Besides, in time all material things go away.

We have, instead (of soot and dirt), disorganization. We have this proliferation of goods. It's the disease of the time.

Superfluous money buys wasted time, propelling desires that otherwise lay buried beneath the feet of honest toil.

You're so consumed with how much you get, you waste your time with hate and regret.

People think that being famous is just about having your picture taken all the time and being rich rich rich, and you know what?... They're absolutely right.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries.

Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.

There is no such thing as material covetousness. All covetousness is spiritual. ...Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

Yes. And I'm rich now when I think about it. I own myself, and I'm worth eight hundred dollars. I wish I had the money. Then I wouldn't ever want anything else

the dollar their god, how to get it their religion.

extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags—that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was

So I learned then, once and for all, that gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and that only low-born metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter.

What at all can we ever really possess?

My clothes are made of monosodium glutamate and hexachlorophene. My food is made of polyester, rayon and lurex. My rug lotions contain vitamins. Do my vitamins feature cleaning agents? I hope so. My brain is gimmicked by a microprocessor the size of a quark, and costing ten pee and running the whole deal. I am made of — junk, I'm just junk.

We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.

Science investigates, religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power, religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts, religion deals with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralysing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.

The richer we have become materially, the poorer we become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

You call your thousand material devices "labor-saving machinery," yet you are forever "busy." With the multiplying of your machinery you grow increasingly fatigued, anxious, nervous, dissatisfied. Whatever you have, you want more; and wherever you are you want to go somewhere else … your devices are neither time-saving nor soul-saving machinery. They are so many sharp spurs which urge you on to invent more machinery and to do more business.