Quotes About Materialism

Let's give our people what they want, which means fast food, cheap television, cars, and Levi jeans.

We feed on the world in increasingly desperate attempts to compensate for feelings of incompleteness, separation, and alienation. This is a sorry way to live.

One qualification for prospering is to esteem earthly things lightly. You cannot put earthly things above spiritual things and expect to prosper as God desires you to.

Why are we so unhappy despite our material affluence? [...] [T]he modern world has lost the art of "ordinary magic" - the art of transforming our ordinary, mundane, and perhaps humdrum existence into a life of beauty and joy.

The white man who is our agent is so stingy that he carries a linen rag in his pocket into which to blow his nose, for fear he might blow away something of value. — Piapot

If I lived in a big house and had rooms full of different things, if I had big cars and a library full of books, if I had pulled out all the flowers and medicine plants and made a lawn that looked like a rug, people would come to me and ask me about everything because they would say I am a 'good' Indian. All it would mean is that I am an Indian with lots of possessions, just like a white man. That would make me good and important in your eyes. Admit it.

Every once in a while I would have to go to a powwow and put on some feathers so you could believe I was a real Indian. But other than that you would think I was smarter and more important if I lived in a big house and owned lots of things. That's just the way white people are. It's the way you are trained.

Junk takes everything and gives nothing but insurance against junk sickness.

Nepromišljeno jurimo za novotarijama, gonjeni sve snažnijim osje?ajem nedostatnosti, nezadovoljstva i nemira. Više ne živimo od onoga što imamo, nego od obe?anja, više ne u svjetlosti današnjega dana, nego u tami budu?nosti, koja ?e, kako o?ekujemo, napokon donijeti pravi izlazak sunca.

Acolo unde predomin? materialismul raÅ£ionalist statele se transform? mai puÅ£in în niÅŸte închisori, cât în niÅŸte ospicii.

Loss of roots and lack of tradition neuroticize the masses and prepare them for collective hysteria. Collective hysteria calls for collective therapy, which consists in abolition of liberty and terrorization. Where rational istic materialism holds sway, states tend to develop less into prisons than into lunatic asylums.

the meaning of life is not exhaustively explained by one's business life, nor is the deep desire of the human heart answered by a bank account.

Who could justify trading a lifetime of stress and backbreaking labor for better blinds? Is a nicer-looking window treatment really worth so much of your life?

Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.

She cautioned her prosperous friends to live united to God's will. She also stressed that there is goodness in material possessions, for God wishes us to live in the joy of his gifts. But she also cautioned us that we must not love these gifts in such a way that, instead of our possessing them, they begin to possess us.

But we are wealthy, and our purses are so heavy that we cannot carry both our goods and his cross. So we cling to our wallets and leave the cross bearing to those who have less to surrender.

The signs of older times could still be seen on the facades of sealed buildings: Gap, Starbucks, Abercrombie & Fitch - merchants that had sold things people didn't necessarily need but always wanted.

How can you humans actually believe yourselves superior to any truly sentient being? Look at you - self-styled demigods, mired in your own filthy social excrement, possessed of vomitous morals. You kill each other with unnatural impunity, preying upon the weal and helpless... not from necessity, but for gain. Name one other species that maims and destroys to gain glittering trinkets that will not fill one's belly.

Este estado de felicidad y paz, y no las posesiones materiales, es la medida del pensamiento correcto; la infelicidad, no la falta de posesiones materiales, es la medida del pensamiento errado.

Thank you," she says and yanks the pull-tab off the soda can. She takes a big sip and aaahs. Then she takes the pull-tab and puts it on her ring finger like a wedding band. She holds her hand out and looks at it. "Someday," she says wistfully. "Wow, a soda pop pull-tab ring. You're easy. Most girls want their ring from Tiffany's." "Well, I'm not most girls." She's telling me?

Empiezo a preguntarme si no me habré equivocado contigo, lamentable criatura. Tienes que aprender que todo aquello que puede comprarse con una cierta cantidad de dinero no es realmente importante.

Nadie pretende que la gente viva en una barrica. Pero lo que sucede hoy en día me parece excesivo. Las personas son utilizadas mientras las cosas son valoradas, en lugar de que las cosas sean las utilizadas y las personas sean las valoradas.

Yoga in Mayfair or Fifth Avenue, or in any other place which is on the telephone, is a spiritual fake.

Yet even that equality within the American middle classes had started to erode. The new models of car, for example, were categorised by rank and status. For those starting out there was the Chevrolet, next came the Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles and Buicks, while the seriously rich drove Cadillacs. Not only that; buying and consuming were increasingly a social norm. You had to drive a new Pontiac, and by 1959 anyone still riding around in a 1956 model was