Quotes About Materialism

Talking about a materialistic thing, I get about 13 times more royalties from Europe than I do from America.

I don't really give into all that philosophical talks that 'money is not everything.'

Money talks at the end of the day.

To use good things to our own ends is always a false religion

Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions" (Luke 12:15).

Superficiality is the curse of our age.

As Martin Luther writes: The sinful worship of Mammon does not consist in eating and drinking and wearing clothes . . . for the needs of this life and of the body make food and clothing a requirement. But the sin consists in being concerned about it and making it the reliance and confidence of your heart . . .1

The unreasoned boast abounds that the good life is found in accumulation, that "more is better.

First, buy things for their usefulness rather than their status.

Most people have no need for more clothes. They buy more not because they need clothes, but because they want to keep up with the fashions. Hang the fashions! Buy what you need. Wear your clothes until they are worn out. Stop trying to impress people with your clothes and impress them with your life.

We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity.

We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.' ...It is time to awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.

Cash is the magic that anyone can do.

Eight floors of the kind of consumer garbage that L.A. is famous for. Need a Ferrari jacket? Sure. You're a race car driver. Vroom vroom. Need silk designer socks that cost more than neurosurgery? We have that too. Come on down to the Beverly Center for something bright and shiny and leave feeling poorer, puzzled, and dead inside.

Once you have adjusted to a higher standard of living, it may give you little or no extra happiness.

Not only is happiness not money, it is not even like money.

The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.

Money cannot buy peace of mind. It cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none.

The scientists have given [modern man] the impression that there is nothing he cannot know, and false propagandists have told him that there is nothing he cannot have.

Since both knowledge and virtue require the concept of transcendence, they are really obnoxious to those committed to material standards…

Loving comfort, risking little, terrified by the thought of change, (the middle class') aim is to establish a materialistic civilization which will banish threats to its complacency. It has conventions, not ideals; it is washed rather than clean. Thus the final degradation of the Baconian philosophy is that knowledge becomes power in the service of appetite.

The hedonic treadmill says that no matter how much you have right now, you will want more, and when you get more, you will want more still—unless you're wise enough to save your money for some of the things that do lead to happiness.

In the end, we all lose it. Remember that. In the end, we own nothing.

It's a shame people don't have the advantage of knowing when their time's up..They would stop trading time for trinkets –