Quotes About Materialism

For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it.

An effort was made to spread this new materialist atheism with its Communist consequence by the sword (as the metaphor goes), that is, by the invasion of neighboring countries with consequent further massacres and the extension of the area of despotic Soviet control... This armed attempt at expansion was checked by Catholic Poland, the most immediately exposed victim, in what has been called one of the decisive battles of the world.

We make irrational and often destructive choices because we have given money and its pursuit too much value.

You call this progress, because you have motor cars and telephones and flying machines and a thousand potions to make you smell better? And people sleeping on the streets?

America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable

This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.

Today we do not live under a sacred canopy; it is marketing that forms the backdrop of our culture. The message that advertising dins into our conscious and unconscious minds is that fulfillment derives from the things we possess.

What people queued the entire weekend for became, six months later, as interesting as the socks on their feet. What happened to the cognition-enhancing helmets, the speaking fridges with a sense of smell? Gone the way of the mouse pad, the Filofax, the electric carving knife, the fondue set. The future kept arriving. Our bright new toys began to rust before we could get them home, and life went on much as before.

At a deep psychological level, convincing young people that they will get the respect, admiration, love that they are looking for through consumerism is a manipulation of a deep human instinct to want to belong.

Modeling is basically 'Buy more stuff! Don't you want some more stuff? It will make you look ten years younger and men will like you!' If I'd wanted to be a salesperson, I would have got a job selling.

I think if you were to ask me when I was much younger what my definition of the good life was, I think it would have sounded a lot like what most people would say - a life with all the things you want and everything you think you need to make you happy, and these sorts of things.

End of the day, don't like me or whatever. Just go back dreaming about your dream car or house while I go buy them.

There's always going to be someone with a bigger toy than yours.

When you lose everything, then you have something. It's exactly the opposite because everything that you have, it's not really yours. What is yours, you don't need to earn. It's yours by right.

What saddens me is the corruption of youth and beauty, and the loss of soul, which is only replaced by money.

I gave up my fur coats years ago - what an ego trip, walking around wearing cut-up animals. Besides, fur coats don't last. I'd rather have diamonds.

So many of today's programs are about trophies and jackets, and we think that's a big mistake.

Yes, I've done a lot of things in life, but I've also achieved a lot, I've won trophies. When I was at Sunderland I looked through the dressing room and thought 'who's won anything substantial here?'. Nobody had and yet they all had a flashy car and an opinion.

I had no desire to be an upward-mobile-rising yuppie with a trophy wife, a trophy house, a trophy car. I wasn't looking for any of those things. I already had what I wanted.

If the award comes with a check, then I want that award. But if it doesn't come with a check, then I'm not that interested. I'd much rather join NASCAR and get a trophy and a check.

I don't keep a lot of the trophy stuff. I don't pay attention to it.

Once we are fed, heated, housed and healthy, our extra consumption inevitably has an element of luxury about it. And once luxury enters the scene, the practicalities are in trouble, as women who wear expensive stiletto heels can testify.

Civilization in our time is driven by materialism and troubled by pollution, over-population, corruption, and violence. National parks can hardly be uncoupled from the society around them, but that only makes it more important to protect them and keep them whole and pure.