Quotes About Materialism

For someone growing up in America now, there are few available alternatives to the cool consumer worldview.

Why do the wicked attract us so? What hint of glamour, hope for material gain, or assumption of fleeting happiness do they radiate, that we can find ourselves so easily, fatally taken in?

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts;

Worldliness is often defined in terms of certain behaviors, such as gambling, going to certain movies, wearing certain kinds of clothes, and so on. But worldliness goes much deeper. It's a mindset, or attitude. Of course, this attitude reveals itself in actions, but worldliness begins as an attitude. A concise definition of worldliness is a love for passing things.

The three facets of the world system in 1 John 2:16 are the lust of the flesh (the desire to satisfy the impulses of the flesh), the lust of the eyes (the desire for things we see), and the boastful pride of life (the desire to promote self). E.M. Bounds graphically portrays the world system that surrounds us.

being, of living, and of dressing, the pleasures and the wants of yesterday are to him the pleasures and wants of tomorrow. Rich or poor, he puts on every morning the same woollen cloth, and lays it aside only when he has worn it entirely out, in order to purchase another

Man owns nothing, never will, though he holds on to illusions of such, in the end he finds what is left-character and integrity. And if none be found was he truly here? By Mark Miller

Americans sense that something is wrong with the places where we live and work and go about our daily business," wrote social critic James Howard Kunstler in 1996. "We drive up and down the gruesome, tragic suburban boulevards of commerce, and we're overwhelmed at the fantastic, awesome, stupefying ugliness of absolutely everything in sight… as though the whole thing had been designed by some diabolical force bent on making human beings miserable.

we have come to invest so much attention on something so shallow.

And yet, in a culture like ours, which is given to material comforts, and addicted to forms of entertainment that offer immediate gratification, it is surprising that so much poetry is written.

But the comfortable life is a slippery slope toward the consumer life.

instead of purifying my character I was multiplying my wants.

The comfortable life is a slippery slope toward the consumer life.

That's how it always was and always will be, he thought a little bitterly. We come in with nothing, and we go out with nothing.

Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.'

I don't accept flowers. I take nothing perishable.

If you take off your pants and her first reaction is, "Awwww, look at it...like a little baby Jesus." Time to buy a Porsche.

Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down.

Funny, I never shopped. Even my jewelry - not a piece of my jewelry I bought for me.

Sorry - Americans only buy things that come from suffering. They just enjoy it more when they know someone's getting hurt.

If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations.

After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts.

Many people and companies only have one goal: money, money, and more money. Greed is ok when you let others profit from it, but greed for oneself is bad, it makes you ill.