Quotes About Materialism

From this process has emerged a parallel process of translating traditional working and living values into a new political and economic power - a power increasingly based upon the strength of money and those material things money can purchase.

I love my books, and with all their dog-ears and under-linings they are irreplaceable, but I sometimes wish they'd just vanish.

Money is our madness, our vast collective madness.

I drive a Nissan Versa and would never spend real money on a car because I destroy things.

It's sad, the enslavement of the black underclass to designer labels - we're an age that cares more about Versace than Vermeer.

Money to me had always been merely something the sheep used to show each other how wonderful they were.

Other people are less important to me than lawn furniture.

My car is right over here," Kraunauer said, steering me toward a modest-looking gray sedan with a stylized letter "B" on each hubcap. And in spite of that, it wasn't until I opened the door and saw the walnut-lined instrument panel and soft glove-leather seats that I realized the "B" stood for "Bentley." I slid onto the sweet-smelling seat and tried not to soil it by sweating or thinking impure thoughts.

I had turned soft, smug, self-satisfied, lulled to sleep by my cushy lifestyle and the easy availability of the game in these pastures of plenty I had been hunting in for so long.

I mean, shouldn't there be more? There's not even enough to add up to anything except another wage slave so dumb I even pay my taxes. And

A considerable amount of American consumption spending is not for the enjoyment of consumption per se, but to show off wealth, status, or sexual allure. In the famous phrase of the economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen, this is "conspicuous consumption," that is, consumption whose main purpose is to impress others rather than to be enjoyed by oneself.2

The end result of all this consumption is a society running furiously to stay in place. The overwork by each member of society puts a burden (a negative externality) on others, who must also run hard to keep up. Consumers also run because others are running, with everybody finding themselves in a race they'd rather do without. The

Capitalism has resulted in material well-being, but spiritual bankruptcy.

M]aterialism clearly poses a bit of a problem for a central tenet of the justice system - namely, that people exert free will in their actions, including their criminal actions. If actions are merely the inevitable consequences of hard-wired brain circuitry - or, pushing the chain of causation back a step, of the genes we inherit from our parents - then the concept of genuine moral culpability becomes untenable.

If there is a single fundamental underpinning in the intellectual tradition of Western scientific thought, it is arguably that there exists an unbridgeable divide between the world of mind and the world of matter, between the realm of the material (which is definitely real) and the realm of the immaterial (which, according to the conventions of science, is likely illusory).

Like all of modern science, the field of psychiatry, especially in its current biological incarnation, has become smitten with materialist reductionism, the idea that all phenomena can be explained by the interaction and movement of material particles. As a result, to suggest that anything other than brain mechanisms in and of themselves constitute the causal dynamics of a mental phenomenon is to risk being dismissed out of hand.

You know what else I haven't seen? Home stores. I've not passed the equivalent of Restoration Hardware or Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn, so I get the feeling that no one's killing themselves working double shifts so they can consume stuff to make their homes Pinterest-perfect. Maybe the Roman message is to not let your stuff own you.

He always appreciated expensive things, as if consuming them would make him valuable.

I collect new books the way my friends collect designer handbags. Sometimes, I just like to know I have them and actually reading them is beside the point. Not that I don't eventually end up reading them. I do. But the mere act of buying them makes me happy.

If you would get a contented life, do not grasp too much of the world, do not take in more of the business of the world than God calls you to.

My brethren, the reason why you do not have contentment in the things of the world is not that you do not have enough of them. The reason is that they are not things proportional to that immortal soul of yours that is capable of God Himself.

when the heart of a man has nothing to do, but to be busy about creature-comforts, every little thing troubles him; but when the heart is taken up with the weighty things of eternity, with the great things of eternal life, the things of here below that disquieted it before are things now of no consequence to him in comparison with the other-how things fall out here is not much regarded by him, if the one thing that is necessary is provided for.

people who strongly value the pursuit of wealth and possessions report lower psychological well-being than those who are less concerned with such aims.

One cannot be free from the stresses of a speed- and size-obsessed culture, until you are free from the materialistic addictions, time-famine mindset, and comparative impulses that created it in the first place.