Quotes About Materialism

What is the purpose of throwing aside and leaving behind all the corporeal things down on Earth if your only wish is to receive the same things in heaven?

Basically, if you move away from materialistic optimism but without embracing Judaism or Christianity, you are quite likely to end up with some kind of Gnosticism.

you are rich in the things I do not need and poor in things I count important.

With time, material things—once we let go—have a way of not having the significance we've pinned to them.

Can a nation call itself free if it finds itself periodically on the verge of bankruptcy and starvation in the face of the fact that it possesses all the materials of the good life?

avenues—television, magazines, movies, music, friends, malls, and catalogs, to name a few. A steady diet of these worldly influences will shape our view of what is valuable, what is beautiful, and what is important in life.

if there is no God, and life is a chance product of blind material forces, what purpose does human life have? Is it just a chemical accident on a rock flying through the cold, empty reaches of space?

Materialists thereby deny the reality of mind (while they use their minds to advance materialism), determinists deny the reality of human choice (while they choose determinism), and relativists deny the fact of right and wrong (while they judge you if you disagree).

Mitchell claimed that her materialist view leads to "humbleness." But it is not humbling; it is dehumanizing. It essentially reduces humans to robots.

surprising as it may sound, pantheism is not really all that different from materialism. It is the flip side of the same coin. Materialism states that everything consists of material stuff. Pantheism states that everything consists of spiritual stuff. Both are non-personal. As a result, both worldviews fail to account for human personhood.

neither materialism nor pantheism is up to the task of accounting for the origin of human beings.

Western culture is regressively falling back into a dualism that denigrates the material realm, just as paganism did.

Ancient Greek culture was permeated by philosophies such as Gnosticism and neo-Platonism that regarded the material realm as the realm of death, decay, and destruction. Gnosticism taught that the world was so evil that it could not be the creation of the highest, supreme deity but must be the handiwork of an evil sub-deity.

This is the tragedy of the postmodern age. The things that matter most in life, that are necessary for a humane society—ideals like moral freedom, human dignity, even loving our own children—have been reduced to nothing but useful fictions. They are tossed into the attic, which becomes a convenient dumping ground for anything that a materialist paradigm cannot explain.

Even materialists often admit that, in practice, it is impossible for humans to live any other way. One philosopher jokes that if people deny free will, then when ordering at a restaurant they should say, "Just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined I will get.

John Calvin defines idolatry as worshipping "the gifts in place of the giver himself.

What the dominant classes hold as true tends to shape social and political practice. If the elites hold a materialism that reduces humans to computers, then they will treat people like computers. Thinking will be reduced to computing: the neuroelectrophysiology of the brain. People will be judged solely by how well they perform their assigned functions. And when they stop functioning, they will be tossed in the garbage heap with the other electronic trash.

In their original historical context, these verses were astonishing. In the ancient world, virtually all the major "isms"—Platonism, neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Hindu pantheism—taught a low view of the material world. In these philosophies, salvation was conceived as a complete break between matter and spirit, a flight from the physical world. To make that break, adherents adopted a regimen of asceticism to suppress bodily urges and desires.

We want new clothing, more clothing, pretty clothing, because rather than looking at clothing as something to cover the shame of our nakedness, we view it as a sign of status, a source of happiness, or a way to compete or show off.

Ease, luxury, and plenty are not shameful, but they are not happiness.

There is only one thing in this world, and that is to keep acquiring money and more money, power and more power. All the rest is meaningless.

Men are ruled by toys

Why grab possessions like thieves, or divide them like socialists when you can ignore them like wise men?

One may be stripped of accustomed luxury so that the malignant mole of materialism may be removed. One may be scorched by humiliation so that pride can be melted away. Whatever we lack will get attention, one way or another.