Quotes About Materialism

You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. Go in any rich house and it's some weird coloured embossed stuff.

It was very weird when my classmates were getting hundred-thousand-dollar cars because that was so not my reality.

I think I'm developing a kind of subconscious loathing of the word 'franchise.' I just think of something that's packaged, something you can buy on a shelf and is immediately disposable. I don't know. It's a really weird word for me.

I'm obsessed with my 20s. I buy things that I wanted in my 20s. It's weird; it's a weird thing that I didn't grow out of.

As we get rich, the basics of life - food, clothing and shelter - become a very small part of total expenditure. And people have enough money to purchase things that enhance them spiritually, and I mean the word 'spiritual' not necessarily in a religious sense but in the sense that it adds to your feeling of well-being.

The more people have, the less content they seem to be. In America, the cultural expectation that we're to be happy all the time and our children are to be happy all the time is toxic, and I think that really gets in the way of emotional well-being.

I met the most extraordinary people all over the Pacific, but especially the people in Vanuatu who, in a material sense, are the poorest people I've ever come across. They own nothing, but in a well-being sense, they are easily the wealthiest people that I've come across.

God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.

What Western society teaches us is that if you get enough money, power, and beautiful people to have sex with, that's going to bring you happiness. That's what every commercial, every magazine, music, movie teaches us. That's a fallacy.

Life has an interesting way of teaching even the most powerful people that joy from wealth is fleeting at best.

In my experience, there are plenty of bad middle-class parents: those who put their own lives and careers before those of their children and make precious little time available for their offspring, preferring instead to hire in childcare and shower them with the latest and most expensive gadgets.

Truly a man does not live by bread alone. A good name is still to be preferred over great riches. Especially is it to be preferred to the appearance of riches, acquired with nothing down and nothing to pay for two months.

People go on about how much players earn in the Premier League but once you've bought a nice house and car, what else is there to spend it on?

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

The day I don't attend to my nostrils is the day I will have forsworn that world and become a different person. Someone otherwise preoccupied. Someone who couldn't care less what anyone thinks of his appearance - someone for whom the material life has lost its appeal.

Whether we live alone or with other people, few acknowledge the presence of another roommate. This roommate is named 'Things' and the space that 'Things' occupies is typically a lot larger than the space people have for themselves.

I'm not materialistic. I believe in presents from the heart, like a drawing that a child does.

Very early on in life, I decided the hell with it: material things weren't for me. Christmas would come, and other kids would have all these presents, and it wouldn't bother me a bit.

But I also like to shower my parents with presents. I bought them a beautiful car and a house.

I get mad when people give me presents. I don't want them, I don't need them.

I'm just collecting gold presents, which is more fun, actually, than buying gold.

I really like my cars. The way I see it, if I work then I can treat myself to these presents.

Apparently, it makes me hard to shop for because I'm constantly buying myself presents.

I thought I should have a Rolls, for prestige, so I ordered one. But when it came, I realized that I didn't really need it.