Quotes About Materialism

We can't stop shopping, we must stop shopping. It isn't only that consumption is distorting the climate, felling the forests, cluttering out lives, filling our heads with a throwaway mindset, even stealing the stars from the night sky. The worst is that it leaves us with no idea of what else to do, no belief that things can be different. Whichever way we go, it leaves us doomed.

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren land; long heath, broth furze, any thing.

The American people are sheep. They're comfortable, rich, working. It's like the Romans, they're happy with bread and their spectator sports. The Super Bowl means more to them than any right.

The problem with the "wanting mind" is that even if you get what you think you want, it does not stop. It says, "All right, I have got the nice car, but now I need more money." It is always something that we do not have in the present moment—something that we want to obtain in order to satisfy our longing.

More recently, as faith gave way to materialism, anti-Semitism assumed a secular mode, harnessing itself to the dominant ideologies of both the Left and the Right.

Genghis Khan warned them against the pursuit of a "colorful" life with material frivolities and wasteful pleasures. "It will be easy," he explained, "to forget your vision and purpose once you have fine clothes, fast horses, and beautiful women." In that case, "you will be no better than a slave, and you will surely lose everything.

I want to be part of the resurgence of things that are tangible, beautiful and soulful, rather than just give in to the digital age. But when I talk to people about this they just say, 'Yeah, I know what you mean ' and stare at their mobiles.

I'm a strict materialist - but the police are brutal materialists.

When I was young I didn't care about education, just money and box office.

Where are they now? she thought. Her iPod, her iPhone, her iPad, the I-ness of her life? Her mind stretched around in its memories, searching for her things: She saw her phone on the hotel bedside table in Paris; her iPad in her Louis Vuitton urban satchel; her iPod slipping from her pocket in the restaurant, the night before she ran away.

For people like this life is just about stuff. Having more than your neighbor and never enough. For these types of folks it's all about fortune and fame. What pays off is good, what does not is lame. So they don't and they won't and they can't understand. It's wisdom, not money that makes life grand.

One can best describe the culture of consumerism as the unbridled consumption of commodities for the satisfaction of psychological needs that cannot be satisfied through the practice of consumption

Did money give people a blind spot? Rob them of their hearing?

When I took these things from the house: some tapes, some books, my winter clothes, I did not know that these would become the things I own.

The more you add to what you have, the less you are. Accumulating more, concentrating all your effort in the quest for things you can have, means losing your being in the process.... Being involves something different than the quest for having. Adding to what you have means losing your being.

Most people are investing their whole lifetime just for their material well-being. Dying to live, this is called.

Sex in the body is fine. Money in the wallet is fine. It is only a problem when they enter your mind.

Nobody lived around here. It was one of those American neighborhoods in which upper middle-income workers were warehoused, but in which very little real, actual living was done.

She had too much of everything, and so she longed to have less; less, she was sure, would bring her happiness. To me it was a laugh and a relief to observe the unhappiness that too much can bring; I had been so used to observing the reults of too little.

But mostly I had books - so many books, and they were mine; I would not have to part with them. It had always been a dream of mine to just own a lot of books, to never part with a book once I had read it.

if all the things she wanted to save in the world were saved, she might find herself in reduced circumstances; I couldn't bring myself to ask her to examine Lewis's daily conversations with his stockbroker, to see if they bore any relation to the things she saw passing away forever before her eyes.

Possessions are mere transient effects that come when they are required, and after their purpose has been served, pass away.

Growing up in the Midwest, people don't drive Porsches and Ferraris. They drive Fords and Chevys. And so even if you have the opportunity to buy a more expensive car, it doesn't occur to you because it's not what you relate to.

So our Lord God commonly gives riches to those gross asses to whom He vouchsafes nothing else.