Quotes About Materialism

Money buys everything except love, personality, freedom, immortality, silence, peace.

I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, 'I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer.

What the bloody motherfucking hell happens now? I checked my watch, the white-gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona Jen had bought me for my thirtieth birthday. I'd been fine with the Citizen I wore, missed it, actually, when she gave me this bulky piece of showy hardware, but things like that were important to Jen. She'd taken to the suburbs like an actress getting into character for a new role, and she was always determined that we both look the part.

No one likes to have less than they had before. That's the nature of the human animal.

Because we are so scientific now—and so determinedly materialistic—it is very difficult for us even to understand that other ways of seeing can and do exist.

For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

He who has many material things, may be described as rich, but he who knows he has enough, and is at one with the Tao,

Knowledge frequently results from knowing others, but the man who is awakened, has seen the uncarved block. Others might be mastered by force, but to master one's self requires the Tao. He who has many material things, may be described as rich, but he who knows he has enough, and is at one with the Tao, might have enough of material things and have self-being as well.

Because we are so scientific now—and so determinedly materialistic—it is very difficult for us even to understand that other ways of seeing can and do exist. But those who existed during the distant time in which the foundational epics of our culture emerged were much more concerned with the actions that dictated survival (and with interpreting the world in a manner commensurate with that goal) than with anything approximating what we now understand as objective truth.

Materialist social science implied that we could divide the world into facts (which all could observe, and were objective and "real") and values (which were subjective and personal). Then we could first agree on the facts, and, maybe, one day, develop a scientific code of ethics (which has yet to arrive).

The devil has taken possession of everybody in Ilhéus. All they think about is money and bigness. They're on the road to hell. Things are going to start happening…

They come here seeking gold. May you go to their country seeking a different kind of gold for our needs! But remember, all that glisters is not gold.

There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants--more than anything else--to become rich. As long as they don't have the money, it'll seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they'll understand how important other things are--and have always been.

False riches, consisting of money, houses and lands, acquired by selfish means at cost to others and thereafter used selfishly, are almost always used for the oppression of other persons.

There is no virtue in poverty.

The dragon sickness is a euphemism for the bourgeois materialism which is rife in our consumerist culture. Smaug's fury at the loss of a single insignificant and practically useless trinket serves as a metaphor for modern man and his mania for possessing trash that he doesn't need.

insanlar ellerini pantolonundan güçlükle ç?kard?lar. Ceplerinin bo? oldu?unu ancak o zaman gördüler." Joseph Roth, Toplu Hikâyeler

The woman who had escaped with her life now wept for the loss of her umbrella and was not at all grateful that her limbs were intact.

Therefore, the very large department store should not be viewed as a sinful undertaking, as, for example, the Tower of Babel. It is, rather, proof of the inability of the human race of today to be extravagant. It even builds skyscrapers: and the consequence this time isn't a great flood, but just a shop...

Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.

Capitalism would inch forward, without my actually having to interact face-to-face with another human being. Which was exactly how I preferred it, thank you.

Was he so ignorant of human nature as not to know that a comfortable bank balance and an appreciation of good food and tobacco and well-cut clothes and jewels can go perfectly well in practice, in normal beings, with the keenest sensibility to the spiritualities of art?

The culture and civilization of the White man are essentially material; his measure of success is, "How much property have I acquired for myself?" The culture of the Red man is fundamentally spiritual; his measure of success is, "How much service have I rendered to my people?

It seems to me / the the great bards of the 20th century are in Publicity / those Keatses and Shelleys singing the Colgate smile / Cosmic Coca-Cola, the pause the refreshes, / the make of car that will take us to the land of happiness.