Quotes About Materialism

How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else?

Foolish is he who builds an empire where the sole foundation is of worldly clay

Our lives are becoming more convenient but less tangible, and bookshops are the victims of that choice.

The world doesn't extend in merely two dimensions. There exist profound depths within itself. This world could never be summarized by materialism or any single doctrine. Accept the great mysteries...and explore the universe from within your world. That is the way of magic.

Lust was a reliable emotion, but greed was altogether simpler to satisfy and you got to keep your clothes on.

Money can't buy happiness but it can vastly improve the quality of your misery.

In our scientific age, a materialist picture of the world now holds many captive. Add to that the postmodern suspicion that all truth claims are in fact disguised bids for power and you get a potent mix of skepticism and cynicism, a cocktail guaranteed to make one's blood run old before its time.

The call to self-emptying will always be unpopular to those whose pockets and closets are full. What

Every year I own less of what I use. Possession

Yes, some people are so impoverished all they have is money.

Being rich, of course, meant it was easier to just keep getting what you wanted. It took less and less effort to keep it.

Death brings with it a duty and devotion that cannot be explained to those who don't know it. Why, after all, would you keep his crummy plaid shirts and give his good suits away? Why do material things matter at once less and more? Why, in the void, does ritual, both inherited and invented, rush in?

The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.

the event of the 'golden calf ' stands for love of this-worldly things as objects of worship (v. 51). This event happened soon after the great blessing of Bani Israel's deliverance from the Pharaoh. The Book and the covenant had yet to come. This love, when it competes with and overwhelms the love for Allah, is the root cause of decadence.

Money can't buy happiness. But it sure can rent it for a while.

Money may not buy happiness, but it buys a hell of a lot of distraction from unhappiness

Both Christianity and materialism deny that we have inherent value, that the self is worthy in and of itself.

Borderline parents with an insecure sense of self may use jewelry, clothes, and other trappings as proof of their attainment of the idealized happy family, regardless of their means. Rather than unconditional love, nurturance, and open communication, the emphasis may have been on how things appeared to outsiders. Thus the need for expensive cars, respectable jobs, obedient children, well-groomed pets, a carefully landscaped yard. The

Nothing's as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.

As to those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in God's path, give them, then, the tidings of a painful agony: on a day when these things shall be heated in hell-fire, and their foreheads, and their sides, and their backs shall be branded therewith.

No, nothing has changed in my life at all, and nothing would change if I had millions.

There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of "mind expansion" or "warm healing energy." I don't like drum circles, public nudity or strangers touching my feet.

Miss Kay When Phil walked into our apartment that night, the boys were so happy. The first thing they wanted to know was whether he'd brought back the big TV. All Phil could say was, "I didn't know I was supposed to do that." He looked around the sparse room where we had been living and said, "You should have gotten more stuff." It never was about stuff to me. The last thing we needed during that time was more stuff.