Quotes About Materialism

How different would this country be if few were engaged in making money and many in making things.

I guess I wouldn't want to be rich. you'd never be sure if people liked you for what you were or what you had.--Tellie

what is money for, if not to get what you want?

In Obama's America, the wealth creators are greedy, selfish, and materialistic while the wealth stealers are the most morally wonderful people in the country.

People's clothes ought to be buried with them.

Half the world is redoing its kitchens, the other half is starving.

We] saw products as garbage even when they sat gleaming on store shelves, yet unbought. We didn't say, What kind of casserole will that make? We said, What kind of garbage will that make?

Consume or die. That's the mandate of the culture. And it all ends up in the dump. We make stupendous amounts of garbage, then we react to it, not only technologically but in our hearts and minds. We let it shape us. We let it control our thinking. Garbage comes first, then we build a system to deal with it.

Then they're always trying to sell you something. Everything is based on forcing people to buy. If you can't buy what they're selling, you're a zero in the system.

Have you ever seen so many people, she whispered, gathered in one place in order to be rich, powerful and disgusting together?

The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things.

We believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our social status. It's written in the fabric of our DNA that life used to be beautiful and now it isn't, and if only this and only that, it would be beautiful again.

I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of alturism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy. Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me.

When you build a city near no mountains and no ocean, you get materialism and traditional religion. People have too much time and lack inspiration.

When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you like them for who they are. And when you stop expecting material possessions to complete you, you'd be surprised how much pleasure you get from material possessions. And when you stop expecting God to end all your troubles, you'd be surprised how much you like spending time with God.

debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice.

I talk about love, forgiveness, social justice; I rage against American materialism in the name of altruism, but have I even controlled my own heart? The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy.

The best thing I know about me, is that I'm rich

Part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich." (Trump, Donald, R-N.Y., billionaire real estate mogul; reality show hot air buffoon; ABC News with Ashleigh Banfield; 3/17/2011.)

It made me think of the nice old Marimekko-clad ladies I sometimes went to see in the Ritz Tower: gravel-voiced, turban-wearing, panther-braceleted widows looking to move to Miami, their apartments filled with smoked-glass and chromed-steel furniture that, in the seventies, they'd purchased through their decorators for the price of a good Queen Anne--but (I was responsible for telling them, reluctantly) had not held its value and could not be re-sold at even half what they'd bought it for.

screw the diamonds, they're just dirt with an attitude.

It is another of consumerism's ironies that, although it functions like a mental trap, we often think of it as an escape.

Almost everyone has a psychological gap between the way they believe they should act in daily life and how they actually behave. The more materialistic a person is, the wider that gap is likely to be. Knowingly or unknowingly, materialists often feel conflicted over their failure to be better people-they experience a sense of incongruence between their ideal self and their real self. Simplifiers tend to have narrower gaps and greater congruence.

In effect, the richest countries have an efficiency problem: they are squandering consumption without transforming much of it into joy.