Quotes About Materialism

As Krishnamurti said to Rajneesh, "You want a Rolls Royce? Go to America. Over there, there's a Seeker born every minute." Rajneesh found so many seekers that he eventually owned 93 Rolls Royces.

We can all be glad that the word coincidence exists. Otherwise the Materialist Fundamentalists would find these stories just as puzzling and frightening as the Religious Fundamentalists will find them.

A field that depends on what people believe is unthinkable to a Fundamentalist Materialist, but social studies seems to need such fields.

It appears that some domesticated primates, over the aeons, have not precisely evolved but have learned how to criticize and examine their own neurological programs. Members of this group cannot be mechanically predicted. They exhibit, at times at least, what looks like growth or creativity, although it is possible for Fundamentalist Materialists to insist that this "is really random behavior or behavior whose determinants had not yet been understood.

Those who have had similar forbidden perceptions will have a certain sympathy for Mr. Devereux. I continue to maintain that Fundamentalist Materialism, like other Fundamentalisms, is, or appears within psychological models to be, a defense mechanism, and within neurological models, an editing-out device, to stave off the shock and sense of conceptual rape that causes the unsophisticated to panic when confronted with wonder about the nature of Reality.

We have manufactured all "material things" out of an ever-changing deluge of photons and electrons in an abysmal void. As Nietzsche first declared, "We are all greater artists than we realize." (Or, as the Zen roshi Hui Neng said, "From the beginning, there has never been a 'thing.'")

The Old Agnosticism defined itself chiefly by its opposition to the dogmas of religious Fundamentalism. The New Agnosticism of this book seems to define itself by its opposition to the dogmas of materialist/rationalist Fundamentalism. Yet the agnostic attitude — which I keep gently hinting is also the creative attitude, the Po attitude — remains similar. The agnostic does not want to be bulldozed into joining a stampede of any sort, or bowing to any Idol.

This One True Philosophy is the modern form of the One True Church of the dark ages. The fundamentalist materialist is the modern Idolator; he has made an image of the world, and now he kneels and worships it.

Riches do not so much exhilarate us with their possession, as they torment us with their loss.

Pardon me, but my father says that it is a lie that Americans have everything. You have no sheep, no goats, no trees, no oil, no vines, no wine, not even chickens. He asks, 'What kind of life is that?' He says, 'No wonder you don't sing or dance or recite poetry very often.

What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

To his horror he recollected that he had left both coat and waistcoat behind him in his cell, and with them his pocket-book, money, keys, watch, matches, pencil-case -- all that makes life worth living, all that distinguishes the many-pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the inferior one-pocketed or no-pocketed productions that hop or trip about permissively, unequipped for the real contest.

One for the wheelchair, and one for the tank; one for insurance, and one for the bank; one lived in the TV, bitching and whining; one slept in the hall light, constantly shining.

Consumption can never satisfy because the logic of the consumable object demands the creation of new insatiable needs.

A good indicator of a healthy economy is when people buy completely useless things.

Avea deja mai multe jucarii decat ar fi avut nevoie. Si nu exista nicio jucarie pe pamant care sa compenseze absenta tatalui sau.

Maybe money couldn't buy happiness, but it could get you a table that looked like the back end of a deep-sea fishing vessel.

Lost what? Money? My table at Carew Tower? Your voice in the enclave, I added. Your tee time at the golf course. Trent sighed regretfully, but he was holding me tight. True. Money drives the world, but when everything falls apart to leave the underpinnings of our life bare to the scrutiny of critics and thieves, the only thing remaining, the only thing that can't be taken away, is the love you hold for the people you care about. [...] I have a very sturdy house, Jenks, Trent said. So do you.

We are more than food and drink and shelter. It seems like those should be the crucial determinants, but many a well-fed citizen is filled with rage and fear.

We live in a world where people pretend money can buy you anything, so money becomes the point, so we all work for money.

Era como si todos los ideales y los valores se fundieran bajo el peso del dinero, disolvente universal. Dinero, dinero, dinero. La falsa fungibilidad del dinero, la idea de que se puede comprar el sentido, o la vida.

But then they weren't materialists at all!" He swore with disgust. "No wonder Marxism is dead." "Well, sir, actually a lot of people on Mars call themselves Marxists." "Shit! They might as well call themselves Zoroastrians, or Jansenists, or Hegelians." "Marxists are Hegelian, sir." "Shut up," Frank snarled, and broke the connection.

Markboen tapte ikke hodet. Han fandt ikke luften usund for sig, han hadde publikum nok til sine nye klær, han savnet ikke diamanter, vin kjendte han fra bryllupet i Kana. Markboen gjorde sig ikke ondt av de herligheter han ikke fik: kunst, aviser, luksus, politik var værd nøiagtig det som menneskene vilde betale for det, ikke mere; markens grøde derimot den måtte skaffes til hvilkensomhelst pris, den var altings ophav, den eneste kilde.

Stealing money from humans is rewarding both financially and spiritually.